Welcome back to another episode of five minutes in church history. On this episode

we are returning to our series of these great figures of church history in on this

we are returning to our series of these great figures of church history

in five sayings.

And let's go back to our good friend Martin Luther.

Well, the first saying for Luther is this, Help Me St. Anne, and I will become a monk.

Luther uttered those words during a thunderstorm on July 2, 1505. He had been at Mansfield visiting with his family and he was on his way

back to Airford where he was just wrapping up his studies and law and the thunder rolled.

Luther was terrified by this storm and he hid under a tree and he clutched a rock and he uttered

these words to the patron saint of miners,

his father's position, that if she were to deliver him,

he would enter a monastery.

Well, Luther survived the thunderstorm, gets back to

Erfurt, puts his law studies in future career behind him, and goes straight

into the monastery. The second saying comes in 1510. While Luther was at Rome, he was on

his knees going up and down the Sancta Scala, the very steps of Pontius Pilate that Christ was on. They had been removed by

Constantine and brought to Rome, and there's Luther with all of his fellow pilgrims going up and down.

And when Luther gets to the top of one of these trips,

he says, who knows if this is true?

It shows us a monk who went into his church for salvation and found himself utterly disillusioned by his church and no real hope for his soul.

The word that Luther uses to describe this stage in his life is a German

word on factung. It means internal struggle and actually for Luther it's the plural on Fectunen, these were deep

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