Promises Fulfilled

All God’s promises are “Yes,” meaning they will be accomplished, they will be done as God wills in his time. To which we add our “Amen,” meaning, “So be it, Lord.” Our acknowledgement that God will act does not cause him to act, but we come to great joy saying, “Let it be done, Lord, as you have promised.”

But we in our sinful nature do not always trust God. The struggle for each of us is to believe that God is the God who keeps his word and then to keep on believing this when nothing seems to be happening, to continue trusting in God, in who he is, and that what he has promised he will do.

In a sense, Genesis 21 comes as a welcome relief. We are finally told about the birth of Isaac, a birth for which Abraham and Sarah had been waiting for twenty-five long years. But God is faithful to his promise. We feel Abraham and Sarah’s great joy in the birth of their son. No wonder he is named Isaac (“laughter”). This is a miraculous birth, promised  long before by God.

So we will now consider, first, “The Fight of Faith”; second, “God the Promise Maker”; third, “God the Promise Keeper”; fourth, “God’s Promises to Us”; and, fifth, “Joy Unspeakable.”

The Fight of Faith

Someone reported that the wittiest graffiti he had ever come across on the wall of the men’s room at the university library in Aberdeen, Scotland, read, “Back in ten minutes,” and it was signed by Godot. Those of you who were not forced to read the book behind the statement will not grasp the bad joke. It is  a  reference to Samuel Beckett’s absurdist play, “Waiting  for Godot.” Godot, whomever he was, promises to come but never shows up. So the two acts are filled with conversation about all manner of things between several actors as they wait in vain for the person who never comes. A boy finally arrives to tell them that Godot is definitely coming, but he is still a no-show at the end of the play.

“Waiting for Godot,” originally written  in French  and translated into English, has been judged by some as the greatest play  of the  twentieth century. Strangely, it is reported that Beckett himself was apparently delighted by the fact that his play was interpreted a great many different ways by a great many different people. Many have  thought that Godot is a God-figure, and  that his never showing  up leaves the characters stranded in their lives. One interpreter of Beckett’s play wrote, “The God who emerges from Beckett’s text is the one who is both cursed in his continuing absence and cursed for his surveillant presence.”

What is evident from Beckett’s book is that waiting for God, especially waiting a long time for  him to answer our prayers and act, causes many people to doubt that God is coming at all, or that  he will act and do as he promised. Consider 2 Peter 3:3–4: “First of all, you must  understand that in the last days  scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, ‘Where is this “coming” he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of   creation.’” And we find this theme throughout the Bible. It certainly manifests itself in Abraham’s life through his impatience with God and at times running ahead of God.

Furthermore, this is also a great challenge and test of  faith  in every Christian’s life. It is a type of what Martin Luther called  his “Anfectung,” the frightful struggles and fearsome battles that took place in his head. But faith untested is only theoretical. Luther would write regarding the mental struggles that without them “no man could understand Scripture, faith, the fear or the love of God. He does not know the meaning of hope,” Luther said, “who was never subject to temptations.”[1]

So  the Christian life, then, involves an ongoing battle of faith about whether God is always  true to his word, or whether God hears, or does he care? We can even be mentally shaken by our own desperation and think blasphemous thoughts about God. Clearly, it is necessary and proper to recognize such thoughts as coming from Satan. And at the same time, we must battle through and overcome our fears and doubts, and to stand by faith on God’s unchanging truthfulness and unwavering love, God the Holy Spirit helping us.

This need to patiently wait upon the  Lord in faith is a frequent lesson throughout the Scriptures. When studying  it, we quickly find that the immediate satisfaction of our desires usually does not accomplish God’s purposes in our lives. This was true in Abraham and Sarah’s lives, and that same lesson is one that we must learn too. For example, the apostle Paul tells us that the whole creation has been groaning as it waits for the day of Christ’s return (Rom. 8:21). And John the apostle writes that even the saints in  heaven are  waiting. In Revelation 6:9–10 we read, “The souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and  the testimony they had maintained . . . called out in a loud voice, ‘How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth  and avenge our blood?’”

So  in the fracas of life, the Bible prescribes ongoing trust in God and his word as the cure for a wavering faith. We must not live by our feelings or circumstances, but only by the word of God written and as it is preached to us.

God the Promise Maker

In 2 Corinthians 1:20 we read, “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ. And  so through him the ‘Amen’ is spoken by us to the glory of God.” From this, we learn that each and every one of God’s promises are “Yes,” meaning they are “Yes” in God. And God is not fickle, so they will be accomplished. Simply put, God’s word is trustworthy because he is God. He is the one making and backing up the promises. He alone is “infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth” (WSC, Q. 4). God’s word is certain. He does not change, so he cannot change his word. He must keep his promises, or he ceases to be God, and that can never be.

The thought in 2 Corinthians 1:20 is the same. The promises of God have been fulfilled and ratified in Christ. He was, as it were, a living, incarnate “Amen” to those promises. This is especially true of God’s promises of a Messiah and of salvation offered exclusively through Jesus. So it should not be surprising to the attentive reader of the Bible that Abraham, whose life is held up as an example for all believers in Jesus Christ, should be a man who had to wait for God. He  had to learn to wait while waiting for twenty-five long years.

You may recall that when Abraham appears in the Genesis narrative, he was called by God and commanded to leave his homeland for Canaan. He was seventy-five years old at that time. God further told Abraham then that he would be a father of a great nation. However, in today’s text, in verse 5, we find that Abraham is now one hundred years old when a son is finally born to  Sarah and him.

Throughout that quarter of a century, God made repeated affirmations to Abraham of the promise of a son through Sarah. When Abraham struggled to believe that this could and would happen, the Lord assured him that it would definitely come about. We see that in Genesis 12:7; 13:15–16; 15:2–5, 7–18; 17:16, 19; 18:2–15. It is a promise of a son through Sarai.

The  years passed, and Abraham and Sarah grew older and older such that Sarah was physically well beyond the age of childbearing. Then, finally, after waiting that great time, Sarah now, a ninety-year-old, conceived a son and nine months later, as promised, gave birth to Isaac. It is obvious that the long wait served to demonstrate that this child was not a biological happenstance, but the gift of God. For God had to act to enable the couple to have their son at their advanced ages.

But there is more to this than immediately meets the eye. The birth of Isaac over a quarter of a century of waiting was the only true visible fulfillment of any of the promises God made to Abraham. He was living in Canaan, in the Promised Land. But after many years, he only owned a burial cave. He was a nomad, living in tents. He had to always be careful to not run afoul of his neighbors, who actually did own their own property and so they had many more rights than he. They could tell him to leave at any time.

Further, even now, with the birth of Isaac, Abraham had but one child whom God recognized. He had been promised a great multitude of descendants so that no one would be able to number them. But Abraham could do the math. He was not going to be around to see that multitude. He had but one child, not a horde of descendants. And even when he died seventy-five years later, the family was still just getting started. This all required ongoing faith in God.

Through his descendants, Abraham had been promised the land of Israel, that the whole world would be blessed through his descendants. In our day, we know that this actually happened. But Abraham did not live to see it. It all lay in the future, well beyond Abraham’s life.

Not only did he have to wait many years for the son that had been promised to him, but he  had to by faith also believe God that all the other promises would come to pass as well, and they did, in fact, come about.

God the Promise Keeper

Let’s look at verses 1 through 7 of Genesis 21 and consider the promises God fulfilled in the birth of Isaac. In verses 1 and 2, we hear finally the news that we had been waiting for. It reads, “Now the Lord was gracious to Sarah, as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah what he had   promised. Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised him.” The ESV renders these verses this way: “The Lord visited Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did to Sarah as he had promised. And Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age at the time of which God had spoken to him.”

The tension in the narrative concerning Sarah’s barrenness has been building ever since verse 30 in Genesis 11. There we read, “Now Sarai was barren; she had no children.” And that tension increased with the passing of years and with each promise that God reiterated concerning a child for the couple. Those reiterations and clarifications from time to time were probably comforting, in a sense. But they also increased the couple’s anticipation and anxiety. You can hear Abraham and Sarah exclaiming, “When, Lord? When will we have this child? Time is certainly running out. No, in fact, our  biological clocks have run out already.” As you well know, stewing on this, Sarah and Abraham wrongly decided to help God out, using Sarah’s maid as a surrogate. They, in a  sense, borrowed Hagar’s womb, and that, as  you know, turned out badly.

Now, finally, God’s time has come. The text says, “The  Lord visited Sarah.” This indicates that the birth of  Isaac was supernatural. It was not a virgin birth, but it was a God-caused birth. In fact, Isaac was conceived by the ordinary means of procreation but it was nonetheless supernatural and miraculous. The Lord “visited Sarah,” now ninety years  old. She had been barren all of her life. Abraham was one hundred. So God rejuvenated them. The Lord miraculously enabled Sarah to conceive.

Notice the emphasis upon this happening in fulfillment of the promises of God. Hear it again from the ESV:  “The Lord visited Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did to Sarah as he had promised. . . . at the time of which God had spoken to him.”  Three times in the text these things happened in fulfillment of God’s  promises. So we see that God always  keeps his word.

To say that God “visited” Sarah is to emphasize that it was God’s direct intervention that caused her, an old woman, to conceive a child with Abraham. The same phrase is found in 1 Samuel 2:21. The Lord enabled Hannah to conceive Samuel and her other children. So in 1 Samuel 1:19–20 we read, “Early the next morning they arose and worshiped before the Lord and went back to their home at Ramah. Elkanah lay with Hannah his wife, and the Lord remembered her. So in the course of time Hannah conceived and gave birth to a son. She named him Samuel [meaning “God hears”], saying, ‘Because I asked the Lord for him.’”

We also see this in the case of Boaz and Ruth. Ruth 4:13 says, “So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. Then he went to her, and the Lord enabled her to conceive, and she gave birth to a son.”

In 1 Samuel 1:24–27, we read, “After he was weaned, [Hannah] took the boy . . . and brought  him to the house of the Lord at Shiloh. . . . They brought the boy to Eli, and she said to him, ‘As surely as you live, my lord, I am the woman who stood here beside you praying to the Lord. I prayed for this child, and the Lord has granted me what I asked of him. So now I give him to the Lord. For his whole life he will given over to the Lord.”

Similarly, Isaac, the son of the promise, foreshadows the birth of Jesus, the promised Messiah. In Matthew 1:18 we read, “This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about:  His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit.” Matthew 1:22–23 reads, “All this took place to fulfill what the  Lord had said through the prophet: ‘The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel’—which means, ‘God with us.’”

God’s Promises to Us

Recall in 2 Corinthians 1:20, “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ. And so through him the ‘Amen’ is spoken by us to the glory of God.” This is a reference to a whole series of great promises given in both the Old and the New Testaments. (GJB) These promises, says the apostle Paul, are sealed and confirmed to God’s people by the incarnation of Christ and his saving work as the promised Messiah.

This principle is also true in a much wider sense. Think briefly about the things that are irrefutably made certain for us in Jesus Christ. First, the Bible alone presents us with certainty as to who God is in his being and in his providential care. The Bible alone is written by men called of God who were inspired of God to write the word of God. Hence, the Bible is truth. Hence, it is authoritative. Everywhere else we have only human conjectures, people’s hope-so’s and rough guesses as to God’s character and attitude towards us. The only other reliable revelation by which people can be sure that God has a heart of love towards his people is in the person and work of Jesus Christ. His life and death and resurrection are historical facts. God’s written word says to us that God is love. That is a wonderful, not just promise, but truth.

And God has given us more. In Jesus, we see God’s love in operation. Romans 5:8 says, “For God demonstrates  his  own love for us in this: While we were yet  sinners, Christ died for us.” Jesus and he alone is the God-chosen, God-promised, God-qualified, and God-sent Savior. His death alone is the only propitiation that satisfies God’s divine justice and turns God’s wrath away from his people. Truly, this is love, “vast as an ocean.”

God’s work of redemption ensures our forgiveness. But what if you and I don’t feel like we are forgiven? Well, both in the Bible and in Christ we have the certainty of our pardon. The only message which answers to the needs of an awakened conscience, an alarmed heart, is the old-fashioned gospel, that Jesus Christ, the Righteous One, has died for us, for sinful people, for you, for me. He died once for all for our sins, and we are once for all forgiven. No other religion offers this. They have no true promises from God other than God’s coming judgment. They have no forgiveness of sins in Christ. But for us, Colossians 1:14 declares, “in whom we have redemption,” meaning through Jesus shedding his blood on the cross, “we have the forgiveness of sins.”

Here, then, is the divine “Yes” to which we say “Amen.” And on Jesus’ atoning work alone we hang the whole weight of our souls’ salvation. There are plenty of superficial theories about forgiveness that predominate in the world today. But none promises a Savior sent by God, who is himself both God and man, the one in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. And in Christ alone rests our deliverance from sin—all sin, both original and actual, under which we are held captive, and by which we are made subject to the punishment of eternal death. But through the sacrifice of Christ, it is removed and put away, finished and made an end of. By Christ’s crucifixion, we are freed from the damning power of sin and the punishment owed it. By the cross, we are delivered from the enslaving governing power of sin and also then through the Holy Spirit’s ongoing work of sanctification within us.

There is coming a time hereafter when we will be entirely rid of the very presence of sin, for we will be made like Jesus. God promises it, but do you believe it?  All other religions are false hopes. They do not provide God’s warranty which is for his people alone. “Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God” (1 Pet. 3:18). Only in Jesus are all God’s promises of salvation fulfilled.

In him we have other wonderful promises—certainties for life and death in the matter of divine protection, divine guidance, and the supply of life’s necessities and the like. All promised in the Bible are found in Christ.

Lastly, in Christ, we have the divine certainties as to the future, as to our eternity, over which apart from him is only the black cloud and darkness of hell. From all other sources, we have only people’s wild guesses about the future life. Praise God that he has spoken to us in the Bible. God is reliable, so the Bible, his word, is reliable, and we can depend upon its promises.

Additionally, in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we have solid facts in which we can safely rest our convictions of immortality with God. You ask, “If a man dies, shall he live again?” “Yes, yes, and yes!” All the promises of God in Christ are “Yes.” Can you not say “Amen”? It is a poor compliment to God to come to his most adamant affirmations which are sealed by his Son’s life and death only to answer with a  hesitating “Amen” that falters and almost sticks in your throat. No, we must build upon the rock and be certain of the things that God has promised, grasp with a firm hand the things God has given us, and immovably cling to the immovable foundation. Hold fast to God’s promises like the abalone fastens itself to the rock.

But let me dwell for a moment on the regrettable contrast which is between this certitude which is ours by right in Christ and the hesitating assent and half-belief which so many professing Christians live their lives. The reason for this is partly moral and partly intellectual. Unless you live your life with Jesus as your Lord, you have no basis for the assurance of salvation and heaven, for without holiness, no one will see the Lord.

But the promises certified in Christ concerning the heart of God, the message of pardon, the way for living in Christ, the gifts of guidance, God’s tender oversight of your life, the sanctifying work of the Holy  Spirit, and the sure and certain hope of heaven are things which can and ought to be realities in our lives. The  Christian’s verb we know is not “We  hope” or “We calculate” or “We infer” or “We think,” but “We know.” We know that Christ is ours and we are his.

It becomes us to grasp and hold on to this blessed assurance, this blessed power of certitude of the promises which Christ gives his people. But you must have him if you are to obtain these certitudes, the truths which he confirms so inextricably entwined with himself that you cannot receive them if you reject him as the Savior and Lord over your life. So faith in him, acceptance of him as the God-man who is God’s only sanctioned Savior, the bowing down of your heart and will to him as your Commander and Lord, the absolute trust in him as the foundation of all your hope and the source of all your blessedness and eternity—that is the way to certainty. There is no other road that we can take. So live near Christ, be in Christ, and having been found in Christ, hold fast to his hand as he holds fast to yours. Express your joyful “Amen” to every one of God’s promises.

Laughter: Joy Unspeakable

Sarah’s cynical, sarcastic laughter in Genesis 18:12 has now been turned into laughter of pure joy. Abraham names the boy Isaac in obedience to God’s command. Isaac means “he laughs.” Certainly, Abraham must have laughed for joy, and we know that Sarah certainly laughed (Gen. 21:6). But it is also probable that God too in some way laughed with them. This will be paralleled later in time by Hannah. In 1 Samuel 2:1 it says, “Then Hannah prayed  and said: ‘My heart rejoices in the Lord; in the Lord my horn is lifted  high. My mouth boasts over my enemies, for I delight in your deliverance.’”

It also finds a parallel in our salvation. For our salvation in our lives brings joy on earth in the now, and heaven will bring much  more joy. What elation we will enjoy when we  hear Jesus say, “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful in a few things; I will  put you in charge of many things. Come and share in your master’s happiness!” (Matt. 25:23).

What is more, we see Sarah presented here clearly as a woman of faith. In Genesis 21:6, she praises God from whom all her blessings flow. Twice she uses the word “laugh,” which is in the root of Isaac’s name. So too in Genesis 21:7 Sarah uses the word “children.” This is itself a further demonstration of her faith. She indicates that she saw beyond Isaac to his offspring who were destined to bless the earth.

We should also note that Sarah in our text laid great stress on the fact that God’s promise was fulfilled. Its  fulfillment may have been delayed, but God in his time kept his word. The Lord was gracious to Sarah, as he said (Gen. 21:1). The Lord did for Sarah what he had promised (Gen. 21:1). Sarah became pregnant and bore of a son at the very time God had promised. Sarah’s  own words lay emphasis on the fulfillment  of  all God’s promises. In this way, she was acknowledging that God had turned her cynical laughter into joyous laughter just as God in fact said he would. In this way, she reminds herself and us that she had doubted the promise of God, but now joyfully acknowledges that she had been wrong to mistrust, no matter the apparent physical obstacles in the way of her having a son in her old age. Her laughter was changed to the laughter of joy as she holds the child of promise in her arms.

First Samuel 2:2, 5 says, “There is no one holy like the Lord; there is no one besides you; there is no Rock like our God. . . . She who was barren has borne many children, but she who has had many sons pines away.” There is a sense in which Abraham, and Sarah, to a lesser degree, are every believer. Abraham is called the father of the faithful. He is prominent among the heroes of the faith listed in Hebrews 11. In other words, from Abraham’s personal history we must learn what it means to walk with God, not only from God’s perspective but from our side, not only when God seems to delay. We must then anticipate his answer.

Certainly, one of the most important lessons is to live by faith in this world, which means we must count on God’s faithfulness and the truthfulness of his word. We must stand on the rock of Scripture. We must rely on God’s covenant declaration, “I am the Lord your God.” This very  pronouncement is at the same time a promise, and God holds himself to his promises. All his promises are “Yes” to us, even when it may seem to us that he has forgotten them. This is the test of faith. When our heavenly Father, and when our Lord and Savior, makes a promise to us, we are to count on it as something absolutely sure and certain to be fulfilled. God never breaks his word to his people, and we are to live in active confidence of that fact.

Now, to a brand-new Christian  this may seem to be a fact so obvious that it needs never be said. To the man or woman who had first encountered the grace of God and the power of the Holy  Spirit, a person whose life has been transformed in and out, whose heart has been changed at its very core, is scarcely likely to doubt that God will keep his promises to his people. But as time passes, he or she, you or me, may begin to think that life is not as simple as that, and, in fact, it is not. This is especially true in our ongoing battle with sin and our old nature; when despite many fervent prayers and tears, our temporary defeats seem frequent; despite the fact that God has  promised that those who trust in him are free from sin and the tyranny of sin, and that sin has no authority over them. And then there is a whole set of good desires for others that Christians have, desires that others be saved, that family be saved, to see others be freed from the burdens of their lives, and so on.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, there are a lot of legitimate things that you and I desire as men and women of Christ, as fathers and mothers, as members of this church. But God has not seen fit to either give them to us or he seems to delay. We must learn to keep waiting on God by faith. It is one thing to be promised a son far later than is normal in life. After years of longing for a child, and after finally accepting that, you will die childless, perhaps.

But it is altogether the more difficult thing to believe firmly and to act when the promise God made to you is not fulfilled year after year. And as the disappointment mounts and the heavens remain silent, you continue to get older and older, and the prospect of childbearing becomes in any sensible reckoning so impossible as to make the promise seem nothing but a mockery of one’s hopes. But that is what God did. He  promised Abraham and Sarah. He got their hopes up. He  didn’t seem to give them a son—not then, not in a year, not in ten, not in twenty. And I can assure you that more than once poor Sarah lay at night in her tent wondering why God had raised her hopes only to dash them so repeatedly.

Sometimes you and I wonder the same thing. Why did God promise to fulfill the  desires of our hearts if he wasn’t going to give us what we desire and what we as his children have a right to desire? But it is exactly that question that a Christian must answer. It is exactly such doubts that a Christian must overcome. It is exactly that existential crisis that a Christian must fight through to the other side.

In the same way, it is the lesson that Abraham and Sarah have for us. For while no doubt they struggled to believe the word that God had spoken to them, they learned that God, in his timing, never, never fails to keep his word, and that nothing was more certain through those long, dark, seemingly hopeless twenty-five years than that they were going to have a son. Psalm 40:1–3 says, “I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy  pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on  a rock and gave me a  firm  place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord.”

We must each as Christians come to realize and rest in this, that God is truth, he is always true to his word and promises, no matter how unlikely they may seem at the moment. This means that we must believe in God day by day, in the ins and outs of our ordinary lives. This is what it means to be a man or woman of faith. Richard Sibbes, the Anglican Puritan of the early 1600s was right when he wrote, “To live in hope and confidence in God’s word no matter the circumstances of our lives is the greatest part of what it means to believe.” We throw such words—faith, trust, belief—around a  good deal. But what we are really talking about is being sure that God is going to keep his word when it doesn’t look like he will. That is perhaps the largest part of what it means to walk by faith.

Hebrews 11:1–2 says, “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for.” To be a Christian is to be certain of things that God has promised but that you have not yet fully obtained and grasped. To live as a Christian is to act each day in the confidence that God will keep his word, no matter that it can easily seem as he may have forgotten.

We in a sense are the firstfruits of salvation after Christ. When Christ comes again, we will receive salvation in its fullness. That distinction is clear and as obvious as the difference between day and night. We have part of the installment now; we will obtain the full installment later. That is why in Hebrews Jesus is said to be the guarantee, the warranty, of our salvation. You don’t  need  a  guarantee for something you already have. You have a guarantee for something that is promised to you but that has not yet been fully delivered. You need a guarantee so that you will be sure that something is worth your waiting.

Peter speaks of God’s exceeding great and precious promises. And while they are exceedingly great and impossibly precious, they are still, in significant part, promises—much of which has been promised that we do not yet have in our palms. It is one thing to know that God’s word endures forever, that his promises are “Yes” and “Amen.” It is another thing altogether to live day by dark day in the assurance that God’s promises will be fulfilled for you as they were for Abraham and Sarah, to believe that God will always keep his word in defiance of all appearances to the contrary.

That kind of faith, that bare faith in God, rests in nothing more than the fact that God has spoken. And it is that faith which actually kills self. For it is self that intrudes between us and God’s promises. It is self that wants things now. “I want my way, not God’s way, and I want it now.” But God uses such times to often kill self, and we must gladly yield our lives to God’s purpose. His purposes are higher and more important than our own. God’s wisdom is greater than ours. But in the end, oh, what joy will be ours when all God’s promises are fully fulfilled, especially in the life to come.

But meanwhile, we must enjoy the joy of knowing Jesus Christ in the here and now, of being adopted into his forever family, of being made part of God’s covenant as his child, and of being assured that our sins are forgiven and that we are indeed going to heaven. Amen.

[1] Roland Bainton, Here I Stand:  A Life of Martin Luther (New York: Abington, 1950), 361. Found at https://unite-production.s3.amazonaws.com/tenants/mtcalvaryhuron/attachments/95986/Here_I_Stand_by_Roland_Baintan.pdf