I found the picture below
on this blog. The author rightfully points out a number of errors in the picture of Luther from the Creation Museum exhibit. Here's a very obvious one, at least to me.
The quote is probably not something Luther said:
“If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved; and to be steady on all the battlefield besides is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.”
As far as I know, there isn't any proof Luther actually said this.
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I wonder who did say it. I like this statement and would like to give proper attribution.
Try Luther Works. Weimar Edition. Briefwechsel [Correspondence], vol. 3, pp. 81f.
Courtesy of Wayne Sparkman of the PCA Historical Center at a discussion over at Green Baggins a while back.
Oops. Looks like the Apocryphal Luther shot that one down.
I did some research on this quote a few years back at the behest of an old seminary teacher of mine and found that it is taken verbatim from "The Chronicles of the Schoenberg-Cotta Family", a historical novel by 19th C. author and sometime hymnist Elizabeth Rundle Charles. In the novel it comes from the mouth of one of her characters (not Luther!). As to where Charles got it from, I'm inclined to think that she paraphrased Luther for her own creative purposes, and someone, somehow, somewhere later wrongly attributed it to Luther, after which it took on a life of its own. The Creationist people in Australia picked up on my research (http://creation.com/battle-quote-not-luther), but obviously their American counterparts have not. Fwiw, my original blog post can be found here acroamaticus.blogspot.com.au/2009/11/luther-quote-that-wasnt.html
MacArthur cites it thus:
D. Martin Luthers Werke, Kritische Gesamatausgabe, Briefwechsel, 18 vols. [Weimer: Verlag Hermann Bohlaus Nachfolger, 1930-1985], 3:81, emphasis added)
But I take it this is the same place RPV mentions above.
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