I've done some further reading. Wow, that's a good one. Kudos to Luther for wriggling his way out of needing to acknowledge the Catholic Church as the true Church, even though if he had remained in the Church and helped deal with the corruption, that question would probably not have been raised.

I can see no harm in thinking conceptually about there being a group who are saved and group who are not saved, but I don't think this can be rightly brought into the realm of the physical, leading one to seriously consider that there are two separate entities. I mean we also speak of a "modern church" and an "ancient church", but we never mean to actually say that there are two separate churches.

Christ talks about a tree, with both good and bad branches. It wouldn't be right to say that favours or graces (or even the authority to bind and loose) were witheld from the tree because of some bad branches.

Regardless, one continues to feel (and fear) that Luther has been presumptous and we appear to have no evidence of his authority in the eyes of God to form his own Church and leading half the Christian world along with him. Surely, more than anything, Satan would like to see this split and would be smiling at the confusion. So, in a sense, satan did prevail, but not against the Catholic Church, more in the sense of seeing an institution appear from which he could continue to conduct his attacks. I'm not sure. I'm biased, so this comes out naturally. Apologies for any rash comments. I actually don't blame Luther and even have sympathy for him, but I continue to hold that he had no authority and probably should have isolated himself and prayed more about it before acting. The only objections I currently hold against followers of Luther are the strong anti-catholic segment, who rather than spending their time in worship and adoration of God and bringing their followers to the same, much of their time is spent with hateful words against Christ's Church. I'm not sure what good that can do for Christianity or for their own souls.