![\"Worms](\"https:\/\/ted.adventist.org\/sitenews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/images_news-2017_Worms-centre-2.jpg\")
<\/a>The Reformation shattered that universal certainty. Now you had to make a life altering choice. Do you stay within your community and maintain your identity, or do you trade it all in for an unknown?<\/p>\n\u201cIt involved embracing novelty in an era that despised and distrusted innovation, and validated all change by its compatibility with the inherited wisdom, custom and teaching of the ages.\u201d1<\/sup> If you got it wrong, it meant that you had thrown away your eternal life in heaven, for a much more uncomfortable one in hell.<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=GcSkmz3b9P8<\/a><\/p>\n At the root of the word \u2018heretic\u2019 is a Greek word meaning \u2018choice\u2019, and that is what being a heretic means \u2013 making a choice \u2013 normally against another choice, and this is what the Reformation brought to Early Modern Europe. It forced you to choose in a world that previously didn\u2019t have choices, and these had long-term and life-changing consequences for your work, your family, where you could live, and what you could believe. Protestants had to forge and form completely new communities, worship styles, and new social structures. Once the Reformation genie was out of the bottle, there was no way of putting it back \u2013 there were now options in the world, and while many chose to remain with what they found intellectually, socially, or religiously comfortable, many people didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n Even though Luther had proposed his thesis three years earlier, and his message of faith and grace had gained ground in many places, he was still scared as he appeared before the emperor. In fact, P\u00f6hler describes, he got \u201cwobbly knees\u201d and pleaded for more time to think things through.<\/p>\n The emperor gives him one final night, a time that could be described as his \u2018Gethsemane\u2019 or \u2018dark night of the soul\u2019.<\/p>\nHow do you know which version of Christianity is true? How do you make a choice when two immovable ideas meet each other? That was the \u201cHere I stand, I can do no other\u201d choice for Luther in Worms, and eventually, for many, the ease of making a choice based on conscience and the study of Scripture was made easier as communities were established in more independent places such as parts of modern day Germany and Switzerland.<\/p>\n<\/a>When, in 1521, Martin Luther rode into Worms in the back of a cart, 2,000 people were there to cheer him on. He had the popular vote. However, already excommunicated by Pope Leo X, his full expectation was, that when he faced the Emperor, Charles V, the vote would go the other way, and he would face death.<\/p>\n<\/a>\u201cIt was the most challenging phase of his whole life,\u201d states Rolf P\u00f6hler, professor of Systematic Theology at Friedensau Adventist University, Germany. In part six of Reformation Journey<\/a>, he states, \u201cnailing the thesis was one thing, you can do this in the night or the day, but facing all the authorities of the world, of the Church, alone, with some friends who can\u2019t really help you, this was the biggest struggle of his life.\u201d<\/p>\n