Wolfgang Simson Houses that change the world 25Luther, in Worms (1521), said some unbelievable and unheard of words for the ears of his contemporaries: “I donot believe the Pope and the Church Councils. It is a fact that they erred often. I am a captive of the Word ofGod!” The monk Martin Luther, more than 1.100 years after the first energetic wave of housechurches had dieddown, was able to rediscover the heartbeat of the gospel, salvation by faith and grace, and the centrality ofScripture. His discovery, in effect, was like a bombshell in the night.The history of rediscoveryOther reformers like Zwingli, Melanchton, Calvin, John Knox and others started to encourage the translationand use of the Bible by the common man, and the Bible was translated from Latin - the language of theprofessional clergy - into 14 popular initial languages, and reached 40 translations by the year 1.600. If it waspossible for the very essence of the Gospel - salvation by faith, justification by grace, to be burried under thesand of history, what about the rest? If we can gravely err in the very key and core issues, could we have erredin other, lesser issues, also? The fact that the Bible was again given into the hands of common people startedwhat I call the history of rediscovery, the turning point, where the church started to again climb out fromdarkness, escape it’s own structural prison, and rediscover step by step long forgotten truth and long forgottenpractises, which includes the housechurch.Martin Luthers “Third order of service”In Luther’s “Vorrede zur Deutschen Messe” (The German Mass and Order of Service), published in 1526, hedistinguishes three “orders of services”: the Latin Mass, a public meeting for all in Latin, which Lutherspecially designed for the young people (Latin was the cosmopolitan language, the “English” of that time; theGerman Mass, a second public liturgy in German; and a third kind of worship-meeting about which he writes(W.A.19,44):“The third kind of service should be a truly evangelical order and should not be held in a public place for allsorts of people. But those who want to be Christians in earnest and who profess the gospel with hand andmouth should sign their names and meet alone in a house somewhere to pray, to read, to baptize, to receivethe sacrament, and to do other Christian work...”Luther even saw the need for a celebration type service, attracting the masses, like having “an open air - worshipamongst Pagan and Turks. I am happy if you ring all the bells, play all the organs and trumpet on anythingwhich is loud”, he writes (WA 73,23).Luther never came round to do this most revolutionary restructuring of the church. The history of the churchlists, until today, a long story of prematurely aborted attempts of restoring the housechurch structure, fallingshort of this or the other, as many others, who would follow him in those attempts, had to discover forthemselves. Luther said about his own failure to implement the housechurch structure: “But as yet, I neithercan, nor desire to begin such a congregation...for I have not yet the people for it, nor do I see many who wantit. But if I should be requested to do it and could not refuse with a good conscience, I should gladly do mypart and help as best I can.”Dr. Martin Loyd-Jones believes that in Luther’s case it was a “spirit of caution, political considerations, a lackof faith in the people in his churches and fear of losing the movement to the Anabaptists”. After 1526 Lutherchanged his mind and returned back to almost Roman Catholic forms of “services”, yielding to the pressure ofthe “worldly authorities.” He is even directly responsible for the martyrdom of many thousands of Christianswho did not go along with his teachings, Luther’s contribution to the spirit of the Inquisition. Since 1530 hemaintained, that all Christians who publicly preach the word of God and teach, without being Pastors, need tobe killed, even if they teach correctly.” But Luther was not happy with his achievements. At the end of his lifeLuther writes: “Amongst Thousands there hardly is a right Christian. We are almost pagans with Christiannames.” (WA 10,11).He, like Calvin, who, amongst other innovations, tried to make every citizen of Geneva come to the worshipservices, - or otherwise pay a fine of three Batzen or ultimately face excommunication - “could not decide tobreak from the sociological forms of church since the time of Constantine,” writes bible teacher Visser ‘t Hoft.The Apostolic Movement of SchwenckfeldLuther had a very influential disciple and teacher, Caspar Schwenckfeld (1480 - 1561). Initially, Luther greetedSchwenckfeld, who was a preaching non-theologian, as “a messenger from God, “ and was greatly influenced byhim. Schwenckfeld had a dramatic “born again” experience in 1527, and through his subsequent biblical studiesof scripture, however, he started to critizise Luther, pleading with him not to follow through with his suddennew direction after 1530, an almost Roman-Catholic ecclesiology and his teaching that a person can be bornWolfgang Simson Houses that change the world 26again by baptism. “Luther started to persecute Schwenckfeld with bitter hatred, called him a demonised fool andheretic, and refused to even read his writings; he sent them back unread. The Reformer of Schlesien had towander around Europe like a hunted deer,” writes french Bible teacher Alferd Kuen. The outlawed reformer wentaround and established lively fellowship in many places, which were basically homecells, biblegroups andprayergroups. To avoid further tensions with the established church, Schwenckfeld did not introduce baptismand the Lord’s Supper into his groups. When Schwenkckfeld died 1561 in Ulm, Lutheran Pastors tried, byforce, to bring back his many disciples into the churches, and if they were not willing, had them thrown intojail and their children taken away from them.The AnabaptistsWhen Zwingli, the Reformer of Zürich, started the work of the reformation, a group of former friends ofZwingli dared to establish a Christian fellowship without the permission of the government in Zollikon nearZürich. They were Felix Mantz, a Hebrew scholar; Conrad Grebel, a member of the city council, from arespected Zürich family; and Georg Blaurock, a former monk and excellent evangelist. Grebel, and many others,had started to discover the Bible, as Zwingli encouraged them to