Welcome back to another episode of five minutes in church history. This is day five of our trek through the life of Martin Luther.

I have been enjoying visiting a number of places with you. We've been to Ice Laban, and we've been to Airford. Today we find ourselves in Vittenberg and today we are talking

about a very important moment in Luther's life, the moment of his conversion. It's rather

fitting that we are here in Vittenberg because this is the place of his conversion.

There is some dispute over the date of his conversion.

Some scholars say he was converted before the 95 Theses.

Some say no, it was years after sometime in the 1520s.

Luther gave us his own testimony of that conversion.

He had to write a preface for the collected Latin writings of his. This was published in 1545,

this collected edition of his texts in Latin, and for that Luther wrote the preface and in it he tells us of his conversion.

He tells us that he was lecturing through Romans and Galatians and Hebrews, and then he was giving

his second series of lectures through the book of Psalms. Well we know that was in 15-18.

This is after the 95 Theses. That might surprise some people that as Luther wrote and nailed the 95 theses to the church door, he likely

was not converted, but it was shortly after that.

One of the lines we see actually in the introduction to the 95thases is this out of love for the truth

and the desire to bring it to light that's what Luther was questing after he was

searching for the truth and he was especially searching for the truth of the

gospel. Well as he tells us it was a rough road for Luther to get to the

gospel it wasn't quite the path that most people take.

He was reading Romans and he came across this phrase in Romans 117, the righteousness of God.

And what Luther says, as he finds that, is that I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners.

Thus I raged with a fierce and troubled conscience.

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