DOUGLAS BOND
AUTHOR | TEACHER | TOUR LEADER
REFORMATION
BOND TOUR
2024
with author Douglas Bond
June 18-28, 2024
Wittenberg--Mainz, Gutenberg Museum--Worms--Eisenach--Wartburg Castle--Erfurt Cathedral--Eisleben, Luther's Birthplace--Coburg Castle--Augsburg--Ulm--Heidelberg--Liepzig--Torgau--PRAGUE...
REFORMATION TOUR 2024 already has a number of people inquiring and already on-board! Do not delay! We will explore the important LUTHER sites in Germany as well as make our way to PRAGUE and sites related to the prerefomrer Jan Hus as well as ANNE of BOHEMIA, godly teenaged queen of Richard II. And we will have marvelous food and fellowship together!
April 18, 1521, Luther declared before Emperor Charles V, "Here I stand! I can do no otherwise. God help me, amen!"
TRAVELER REVIEWS
"Words really fail me here - if only I had Mr. Bond's talents! I am so incredibly blessed. Your enthusiasm for history and literature are contagious." (UK and France Tour, 2010).
"It was such an incredible gift and challenge to me to see how Christ-centered you are..." (2014)
"The tour really was way more than we ever expected or imagined..." (2017)
"When is the next tour? We're on it!" (Crown & Covenant Trilogy Tour, Scotland, 2011)
"Douglas Bond serves the church universal with these tours--and the fellowship is amazing!" (traveler on Rome to Geneva Tour 2015)
ITINERARY
(new details but still more to come)
Day 1 -- Arrive in Frankfurt and meet at NH hotel near the airport via hotel shuttle (shuttle bus station is at Terminal 1, hall B , arriving area , exit 4-5 and our bus is dark blue and has the number 4 as well as our logo on it); meet at hotel 1:30 and coach to Mainz; Gutenberg Museum Opposite the cathedral in the heart of the old part of Mainz in Germany lies the Gutenberg Museum. Liebfrauenplatz 5 55116 Mainz Tel.: 06131/12-25 03 / 12-26 44 and cathedral; return to NH Frankfurt Niederrad Hotel (2 nights) for our opening dinner and getting acquainted. Sabrina: +49 30223 850 17 ext 622 Vanessa +49 30 22 38 50 17
Day 2 -- Breakfast in hotel; coach drive to Worms (1:00) where Luther took his intrepid stand for the gospel of grace alone; then to Heidelberg Castle (:40), tour where Ursinus and Olivianus compiled the Heidelberg Catechism; the Church of the Holy Ghost where they preached; dinner in Heidelberg; back to Frankfurt hotel.
Day 3 -- Coach to Eisenach (3:00), where Luther's parents lived; JS Bach birthplace (only if time permits during free time); Wartburg Castle +49 036 91 25 00 where in 1521 Luther translated the German New Testament, wrote his catechism, and began writing hymns; Erfurt (1:00), the Augustinian cloister; the Erfurt Cathedral where Luther attempted to say his first mass; short coach drive to Maxx Hotel in Jena and dinner.
Day 4 -- Erfurt Cathedral morning worship: Day 4 -- Coach to Wittenberg (1:00); Castle church and 95 theses; Stadtkirche where Luther married Katherina von Bora; Luther tree; Augustinian cloister museum where the Luthers lived; free time to see Cranach museum and more of this charming town; coach to Eisleben Luther's birthplace and the Graf Von Mansfield Hotel where he died in Eisleben (1:00)
Day 5 -- Visit Luther birthplace and death house and church Luther preached his last sermon in; back to Wittenberg for lunch and afternoon free time. Return for second night to Graf Von Mansfield Hotel in Eisleben and dinner.
Day 6 -- coach to Leipzig (1:15) see where Luther debated with Johann Eck in 1519; St. Thomas Church where JS Bach was Kappelmeister and wrote many of his famous cantatas; Eilenberg where Lutheran hymn writer Martin Rinkhart wrote Now Thank We All Our God (1636) during 30-Years War; (lunch in Leipzig); coach to Coburg (2:45) and the castle where Luther likely penned A Mighty Fortress is Our God in 1529 (date not entirely certain); coach to Nuremberg (1:58 on the way to Augsburg) in the city that had more than 20 printing houses and was frequented by Luther; Noris Hotel Nurnberg +49 911 3476 0
Day 7 -- Coach to Augsburg (1:20) see Augsburg where the famous Augsburg Confession was signed and approved; visit Dachau Concentration Camp (:36), the prototype concentration camp of WW II; coach to Hotel Residenz Ravensburg and dinner. Sascha or Dietmar +49 +751 36980
Day 8 – coach to Prague(3:00) where Jan Hus preached and taught at the university, lateer burned before the Constance cathedral in 1415; explore the splendors of Prague, hotel and dinner and evening stroll.
Day 9 -- Explore Bethlehem Chapel where Hus preached, and palace where Anne of Bohemia grew up and first heard the gospel while reading translated sermmons of John Wycliffe. Afternoon free time in this marvelous city. back to hotel for dinner.
Day 10 -- Explore Hus square and other sites in the old town related to Anne of Bohemia. WATCH FOR FORTHCOMING BOOK ON ANNE OF BOHEMIA! Final dinner together reprising the whole.
Day 11 -- Breakfast in Prague hotel, good byes, and flights home or connections from Prague
REGISTER TODAY!
This tour is well over half subscribed, so do not delay
Cost per traveler $3850
Early registration discount price (closing soon!) $2999
Register by downloading and signing the tour contract
Mail with your deposit of $500 per traveler to:
Douglas Bond
550 E Strong Rd
Shelton WA
98584
Payment schedule:
--November 1-------------$1000
--February 1------------$1000
--April 1-----------------$499
TOTAL ---------------------------------$2999.00
Read about Anne of Bohemia, part 1
MY BELOVED BOHEMIAN
The Story of Anne of Bohemia
By Douglas Bond
How to be powerful
Imagine if you were a king or a queen, and you could just speak and people had to obey you. History is replete with examples of powerful people who used their power to hurt and enslave others, the weak, the poor, the powerless. “Off with his head!” King Henry VIII shouted many times—he’d ask questions later, maybe. Or Catherine di Medici, scheming the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of thousands of Huguenot Christians in 1572; “Kill them all!” Or envious King Herod, in his determination to kill King Jesus, massacring all the baby boys in Bethlehem. I could go on.
If you had power, you could stop all this! Imagine the good you could do! It’s not all bad to desire to have the strength and influence to use for good, to undo evil schemes, to overturn the powers of darkness. Think of how much good you could do if you were powerful!
But there’s a problem with this line of reasoning. Have you noticed that Jesus did not come to the powerful and influential. He could have. He’s God, after all. But the angelic warrior hosts first announced his birth to shepherds bivouacked on a Judean hillside with their smelly sheep; shepherds were of no account in Ancient Near-Eastern culture; they were considered unclean by the Jews (even Jewish shepherds), and so little did the civil society think of them, they couldn’t testify in a court of law. They were powerless. But God ordained that Jesus’ birth would be first announced to nobody shepherds. Read through the Gospel accounts and you see Jesus intentionally seeking out the nobodies: leper outcasts, the adulterous woman at the well, smelly fishermen, slaves, children, and women.
Power the world’s way—or God’s way
Women, “the weaker vessel,” Peter calls them (I Pet 3:7). For a number of decades now, our culture has been contorting itself to correct this deficiency for women, being weaker than men. Critical Theory says that men are oppressors and women are the oppressed, end of story, and so we need to empower women. Science be dashed, we even have hosts of biology-deniers who insist that women can do anything a man can do; women can be independent of men (who needs them!); women don’t need to submit to God or their husbands; women should be free to be their own persons, follow their own opinions, be autonomous of men. Notice, that all this is another version of what the serpent pitched to Eve in the Garden of Eden: you don’t need to submit to God’s command. Take and eat! You can be like God (meanwhile, Adam was watching the football game, not lovingly leading his wife away from temptation).
True confession: I’m all for empowering women (keep reading)! But there’s the world’s way of doing it, and there’s God’s way. Allow me to be blunt. The world’s way is a failed project. It can’t deliver on its promises. It does not work. It does not work biologically (however much we keep saying it, women are in general far weaker physically than men—that’s biological fact); it doesn’t work relationally, in the work place, in the marriage, in the family, in the church. However hard we try to implement the world’s way of empowering women in these spheres—it actually destroys marriages, families, the church—and women.
But here’s the good news! God has designed a way for women to be powerful—and it works! It really does empower women to do the greatest good. But what is God’s way for women to have power? So many things in God’s Word are counterintuitive, that means they work in the reverse of the way we think they should work. Allow me to illustrate from history.
Empowered wife and queen
On May 11 of 1366, in the palace of the court of Wenceslas, a cute little baby girl was born in Prague... (more to come)
Join me in Anne's Prague June 18-28, 2024--but hurry, Registration will be closing soon.