Happy Birthday, modern world. For the Colson Center, I’m John Stonestreet with The Point.

Tomorrow marks the 500^th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. On October 31, 1517, tradition says that Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on the door of the castle church at Wittenberg.

But what so many fail to appreciate is that Luther’s protest against the scandals within the Church set the stage for the modern world.

Eric Metaxas and I talk about this today and Wednesday on the BreakPoint podcast—which is available at BreakPoint.org. Our ideas about free inquiry, democracy, education, and capitalism can all be traced back to the Reformation—more specifically, Eric says, to Luther’s dramatic confrontation with church and secular leaders at the Diet of Worms.

When they demanded he recant, Luther replied that unless he were convinced “by Scripture and plain reason,” he could not.

So please, check out our BreakPoint podcast today and again on Wednesday to hear my conversation with Eric Metaxas on Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the modern world.