Video Book Review – “Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther”

Lutheran CORE continues to provide monthly video reviews of books of interest and importance.  Many thanks to Ethan Zimmerman for doing this month’s video review of Roland Bainton’s classic, “Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther.”  Ethan is an NALC college student who plans to attend the NALC seminary.  He is part of Lutheran CORE’s younger persons group and has been a college-aged mentor with the NEXUS program of Grand View University.  A link to his review can be found here.

In this review Ethan focuses on three events in the life of the reformer.  The first one is the time when Luther celebrated his first mass.  He was utterly terrified because he did not feel worthy to consecrate the elements.  Ethan mentions that this shows the genuineness and sincerity of Luther’s faith.  He really cared about what he was doing.  The second event is the Diet of Worms, where Luther proclaimed, “Here I stand; I can do no other.”  Having personally come under attack for his faith, Ethan was inspired by the courage and conviction of Luther as he was being attacked for his faith.  Ethan said, “I felt like I was in the room with Luther.”  The third event is the death of his fourteen-year-old daughter Magdalena.  Ethan shares how he was deeply moved by this giant of the faith and giant of history showing his humanity in his expression of sorrow over the death of his daughter. 

This review, as well as ten others, have been posted on our YouTube channel.  A link to the channel can be found here.  Many thanks to those who have made the reviews.   

Our plan is to publish a new video book review during the first week of every month.  Many of the books that are being and will be reviewed are described either in the List of Confessional Resources on the Seminarians page of our website or in the Resources for Youth and Young Adults on the Young Timothy page of our website.  Those lists can be found here and here.

When you look at a video review for the first time, please click on the Subscribe button.  As enough people do that, it will eventually help us to get a channel name that will include our organization’s name.