Stop motion animation that uses Playmobil to tell the story of Martin Luther, and the Reformation. Over 5000 individual photos bring to life scenes from the life of Luther like the castle where he hid as an outlaw, Wittenberg where he taught, the monastery where he was gripped by the Bible, and the Imperial Council at Worms.

Voice Over: Mike Reeves

Animation: Dan Rackham

Here’s the script from the Martin Luther video:

This is the story of Martin Luther.

He got up to some pretty adventurous things. He was kidnapped by knights on horseback; lived in disguise in a castle and helped some nuns escape from a monastery, by hiding them in barrels.

But as a young man he was troubled by a deep sense that he wasn’t right with God. Once, in a thunderstorm, a lightening bolt nearly struck him. He thought he was going to die.

He cried out for help to one of the saints, saying rashly: “Save me, and I’ll become a monk”.

He survived, and so, true to his word he gave up his studies as a lawyer and became a monk. His friends and family said he was wasting his talent.

In the monastery he started reading the Bible. He discovered that it was God’s mercy & love that was all that was needed to be right with God. For the first time in his life, he found a deep peace with God.

Luther was invited to be a lecturer at the university in Wittenberg. He taught through books of the Bible. His lectures were popular, even ordinary people from the town came along.

In those days the Catholic church was telling Christians that their good behaviour could earn them heaven. Luther knew from the Bible though, that no amount of good works could earn you forgiveness! Not even the pope was able to give forgiveness from God – only God could do that.

Luther saw that the church had left behind what the Bible taught and was even making things up for it’s own gain. He decided that he must teach against these false ideas.

He made his complaints public by nailing them to the place in town where people published important documents…the door of the castle church.

He explained that it wasn’t possible to buy God’s forgiveness or to live a life that was good enough to deserve to know God.

His writings, showed that God wants to forgive the wrong we have done. And that this is only possible because Jesus, the son of God, came to pay the punishment our wrong deserved. Jesus did this as he died in our place.

Luther’s ideas quickly spread throughout Europe thanks to a recent invention – the printing press.

The pope wrote a document saying that Luther had to take it all back. And if he didn’t he’d be treated as a heretic. Luther refused and publicly burnt a copy of the pope’s letter.

Luther’s ideas shook things up religiously, politically and culturally. He was summoned to stand before the emperor and answer for his supposed crimes of explaining what the Bible said.

The emperor declared Luther an outlaw, banning his literature. That’s when he was rescued and went to live in disguise in a castle. Dressing in knights’ clothing he changed his name to knight George and grew his hair and a beard.

He spent his time translating the New Testament – this again was published widely, meaning ordinary people could read the Bible for the first time.

Luther secretly returned to Wittenberg. He continued to write books and translate the bible. He also got married and had a family.

Europe was buzzing with Luther’s message about the Bible.

Today, 500 years on, the truths of the Bible that Luther knew continue to impact millions of people.

People who have come to know God personally, knowing the peace and forgiveness Jesus offers us.

The forgiveness that Luther found is still available today.
We can all be in a right relationship with God because of one man – the Lord Jesus Christ.

In this excerpt from Ligonier’s 2017 National Conference, Stephen Nichols and W. Robert Godfrey discuss whether Martin Luther was guilty of anti-Semitism.

Transcript

Stephen Nichols: You know, this is a question you hear a lot, and I think we’ve got to look at the broad context of Luther and then we need to say, that we need to understand him in that context, but we also need to not give him a free pass. So, the first thing we see in Luther is his initial writings to the Jewish people are very favorable. He actually is countercultural in that, and he goes against the current consensus and actually favors a good treatment towards the Jews. As the Reformation went on and a few years on, Luther fully thought that that good treatment towards the Jews would result in their paying attention to the gospel and coming to Christ, and he was not seeing that happen. And he began to question, perhaps, he was too easy on them in his initial writings and should have pressed more, in order for them to be more aware and perhaps be challenged and then come after the gospel.

So, his early writings are very favorable. He begins to think through this, though, in his later writings and the writing that really trips Luther up is his, On the Jews and Their Detestable Lies. And it’s in that writing that Luther unleashes his rhetoric against the Jews and is very forceful in his rhetoric. Now we need to say that he was an equal opportunity offender. It wasn’t just—that rhetoric was not just reserved—for the Jews, he used the same rhetoric for the Papists, for the Anabaptists, for the nominal Christians, that he used for the Jews. But he was wrong. He spoke harshly, and I think he abused his influence that he had in speaking harshly. And so, we need to say that Luther was wrong in that. But this isn’t necessarily anti-Semitism, that’s really a 20th-century phenomenon. What Luther was interested in was really following the lead of the Apostle Paul and following the lead of the New Testament. He saw this as a betrayal of Christ, a betrayal of the gospel, as a failure to recognize Jesus’ coming as the Messiah. And so, it was not an ethnic motivation that prompted Luther to this, it was a theological one. So, the answer to this is we need to understand him in his context, but we should not give him a free pass. And we need to recognize that he has legs of iron but feet of clay. And this is one of those instances where his feet of clay do in fact come through.

W. Robert Godfrey: Just to add one more thing, that’s exactly right—but the one little that should be added is Luther, all his life, longed that Jews should be converted and join the church. Hitler never wanted Jews to join the Nazi party. That’s the difference between anti-Semitic and anti-Jewish. Luther wasn’t opposed to the Jews because of their blood. He was opposed to the Jews because of their religion. And he wanted them to join the Christian church. If you’re really anti-Semitic, you’re against Jews because of their blood and there’s nothing Jews can do about that. There’s not change they can make to make a difference. You’re absolutely right, Luther’s language should not be defended by us because it’s violent against the Jews. It was not against an ethnic people, as you said, but against a religion that he reacted so sharply.