The night before Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses against the doctrine of indulgences on the door of All Saints' Church in Wittenberg, Germany, something very unusual happened. The Elector Frederick of Saxony had a dream that caught his attention in a way reminiscent of Pharoah or Nebuchadnezzar. The next morning, on October 31, 1517, at his palace in Schweinitz, he felt compelled to share the dream with his brother Duke John. "I must tell you of a dream, brother, which I had last night, and of which I should like to know the meaning. It is so firmly graven in my memory that I should never forget it, even were I to live a thousand years; for it came three times, and always with new circumstances."
When John asked to hear it, Frederick related the following:
"Having gone to bed last night, tired and dispirited, I soon fell asleep after saying my prayers, and slept calmly for about two and a half hours. I then awoke, and all kinds of thoughts occupied me until midnight. I reflected how I should keep the festival of All Saints [which was coming up on November 1st]; I prayed for the wretched souls in purgatory, and begged that God would direct me, my councils, and my people, according to the truth. I then fell asleep again, and dreamt that the Almighty sent me a monk, who was a true son of the apostle Paul. He was accompanied by all the saints, in obedience to God's command, to bear him testimony, and to assure me that he did not come with any fraudulent design, but that all he should do was conformable to the will of God. They asked my gracious permission to let him write something on the doors of the palace chapel at Wittenberg, which I conceded through my chancellor. Upon this, the monk repaired to that place and began to write; so large were the characters, that I could read from Schweinitz [located about 20 miles from Wittenberg] what he was writing. The pen he used was so long that its extremity reached as far as Rome, where it pierced the ears of a lion which lay there, and shook the triple crown on the pope's head. All the cardinals and princes ran up hastily and endeavored to support it. You and I both tendered our assistance: I stretched our my arm...that moment I awoke with my arm extended, in great alarm and very angry with this monk, who could not guide his pen better. I recovered myself a little...it was only a dream.
"I was still half asleep, and once more closed my eyes. The dream came again. The lion, still disturbed by the pen, began to roar with all his might, until the whole city of Rome, and all the states of the Holy Empire, ran up to know what was the matter. The pope called upon us to oppose this monk, and addressed himself particularly to me, because the friar was living in my dominions. I again awoke, repeated the Lord's prayer, entreated God to preserve his holiness, and fell asleep...
"I then dreamt that all the princes of the empire, and we along with them, hastened to Rome, and endeavored one after another to break this pen; but the greater our exertions, the stronger it became: it crackled as if it had been made of iron: we gave it up as hopeless. I then asked the monk (for I was now at Rome, now at Wittenberg) where he had gotten that pen, and how it came to be so strong. 'This pen,' he replied, 'belonged to a Bohemian goose a hundred years old. I had it from one of my old schoolmasters. It is so strong, because no one can take the pith out of it, and I am myself quite astonished at it.' All of a sudden I heard a loud cry: from the monk's long pen had issued a host of other pens...I awoke a third time: it was daylight."
Without the Elector Frederick of Saxony, there would have been no Protestant Reformation as we know it. That may be a bold statement but it's true. He did not, of course, preach to the masses or write theological works. It was not for him to recover and boldly proclaim the biblical teaching that justification is by faith alone. However, he was the one man who could protect Martin Luther's life and freedom to proclaim the truth. This he bravely did, in the face of enormous pressure, and even at risk to his own life and kingdom. The Roman Catholic church and the Holy Roman Empire together wanted to silence and then kill Martin Luther. Without the protection of the Elector Frederick of Saxony, Luther would undoubtedly have been shut down before he had the opportunity to proclaim the recovered Gospel to all the world.
Can we think for a moment that the dream Frederick had on the eve of the Reformation didn't factor into the persevering conviction and courage he showed in his protection of Luther? Without question, memory of this dream would have sustained him when doubts arose about the rightness of the Reformation cause and when he experienced direct threats from the pope and the emperor. Indeed, it was a vital part of God's preparation of the Elector Frederick for the important role he had for him in the effecting of the Protestant Reformation.
This short but highly impactful episode at the inception of the Protestant Reformation reminds us of two important things.
1) No matter what your profession or role in life is ---- excluding, of course, vocations that are inherently sinful ---- God can make use of you, in that profession or role, for his glory and the good of his kingdom. Office manager, CEO, homemaker, journalist, check-out clerk at Staples, pharmaceutical sales representative, high school teacher, social worker, baseball coach...you name it. Wherever you are planted, God can make use of you in an eternal way, if you are a Christian. You don't have to be in the ministry to be useful for the kingdom of God. Look at how God used the Elector Frederick of Saxony!
2) While we need to test everything in the light of Holy Scripture, God can still communicate to us personally and can still perform miracles today. There is nothing incompatible between the fact that God can communicate to us in a prophetic way personally today and the unique authority and sufficiency of Scripture. To be sure, the Elector Frederick's dream was not the only supernatural dream that occurred during the time of the Protestant Reformation. Beware of anyone who tells you that sound orthodoxy demands the renunciation of the possibility that God can communicate to us personally today. Scripture is our sole authority for faith and practice, but this in no way precludes God from acting as he did with the Elector Frederick. Indeed, without that dream, we would not have inherited the recovered truth of Sola Scriptura from the reformers.