It is (Re)-Written: Protestant ep 3/7

MASKIROVKA

“He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.” - (Psalms 2:4)

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Summer 1944. News had just filtered in that the Americans and British had invaded and landed troops on German occupied France. In his command HQ, Konstantin Rokossovsky a Russian general of Polish descent, stood pouring through his maps plotting the next offensive. While German generals scrambled to respond to the disaster unfolding in the west, little did they know of the storm Rokossovsky intended to unleash from the east. For months now he had played the Germans a brilliant game. Masking his troop movements and preparing dummy armies and jumping off positions. Part of a fearsome war tactic the Russians call Maskirovka, i.e. deceit. The consensus at the OKH - OberKommandoHeer, German Army High Command, was that Russia’s summer offensive would be toward the southern front through Romania, with the aim of cutting off Hitler's access to the oil fields at Ploesti. Thus veteran tank divisions like 2nd SS Panzer division Das Reich and 1st Panzer division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler were deployed south. The truth however was that Russia’s spearhead armies were in the north, and German lines were spread woefully thin having lost so many men in 3 years of war in the east. Rokossovsky code named his plan Operation Bagration, after the 19th century Russian general who defeated Napoleon. As Bagration had hurried Napoleon’s battered armies from Russian soil, so would the days of Hitler’s German Reich be numbered after Rokossovsky let loose his armies.

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Up until now, our story has concerned us with the reformation only. God had however prepared two fronts of battle against the Papacy. The first to open was what became the Renaissance. For the first time since primitive Christianity, the western mind was given opportunity to think freely, albeit on topics the Papal Church thought inconsequential to her power. The Greco-Roman classics fled the lands recently conquered by the Islam at the fall of Constantinople and the Eastern Roman Empire and pitched tent in the west. Homer, Plato, Archimedes, these men imbued with ancient scientific reason provided the starting spark of life to the western mind, so badly ravaged by the degrading scholasticism of the dark ages. Science and art begun to flourish in the universities. A rebirth of Architecture soon followed, which is the hall mark of a rejuvenated people.

The famous Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence built due and during the Renaissance

The people were not yet ready for the light of heaven, but it is evident that God was preparing them to have capacity for Bible truths. Slowly by means of science and art, He awakens the long slumbering mental and intellectual capacities so that they can better unite with the spiritual faculties to appreciate and comprehend the rich beams from above. Soon it would be said, "The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light" (Isaiah 9:2) Finally, the Renaissance touched philosophy, and the way was open for it to dabble with the Bible. Before our Champions ever took the stage, John Reuchlin a man I so desire to meet and converse in heaven, graced that stage in its infancy. He was uncle to Luther's friend Philip Melanchthon and practically raised the orphaned boy himself, taught him to read the dead languages while young, his was an exceptional mind. Such a brilliant command of Greek and Latin that the Pope sought to make him cardinal after hearing him speak. Yet he hated Romanism in all its forms, even Catholic. Reading the Bible in its original Greek he saw the truth in its purity, for Paul says Metanoia and not candles or hail Mary. Around him arose men of letters, great minds awakened by the Renaissance and terribly aware of the Church's need for reform...

“Reuchlin’s affair with the Dominicans was the signal that brought together all the men of letters, magistrates, and nobles, who were opposed to the monks. The defeat of the inquisitors, who, it was said, had escaped a definite and absolute condemnation only by means of bribery and intrigue, had emboldened their adversaries. Councillors of the empire; patricians of the most considerable cities,— Pickheimer of Nuremberg, Peutinger of Augsburg, and Stuss of Cologne; distinguished preachers, such as Capito and Oecolampadius; doctors of medicine and historians; all the literary men, orators, and poets, at whose head shone Ulrich of Hutten, composed that army of Reuchlinists, of which a list was even published.” - D’Aubigne, History of the Reformation, pg 45

a picture and sculpture of John Reuchlin

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Do you hear the rumblings of revolution? The final nail in the Roman coffin was Erasmus of Rotterdam, a man of giant intellect who unwittingly played his part in preparing the world for the Reformation. “In 1516, a year before the appearance of Luther's theses, Erasmus had published his Greek and Latin version of the New Testament. Now for the first time the word of God was printed in the original tongue. In this work many errors of former versions were corrected” - (Ellen White, Great Controversy, pg 245) The time for war had come.