Welcome back to another episode of five minutes in church history. On this episode we are talking about J.S. B.

And I imagine some of you know to whom those initials belong. They belong to Johann Sebastian Bach.

And usually we follow up those three initials with another set of initials, S.D.G.

Soli Deo Gloria.

But in this instance, I want to follow them up with a set of two different

initials JJ. Yesu Yuba, Latin for Jesus Help.

Sometimes, Bach would just say J.H.

which would be switching to the German,

which also comes off in the English as Jesus Help help. He would put those initials at the beginning of a

composition, whether he was writing something for the court and as he often did for his friend

Prince Leopold, or he was writing something for the church,

he would begin his work by petitioning Christ to help him.

And when he was all done, he would add those initials, S.D.G. for all of his work was done for the glory of God.

Well, let's talk about Bach a little bit.

He was born in the town of Eisenock, which has a great Luther connection.

Isonock sits in the valley below the castle of the Vartburg,

and that's where Luther was hold up after his time at the Diet of Worms where he made his famous

Here I Stand speech and Frederick the wise had him taken before his death sentence could be carried out and had him hold up in the castle

there at the Vortburg and there Luther worked through many of crucial writings

especially the text of the German New Testament. But growing up down in the town below,

was Bach. And so he literally grew up in the shadow of Martin Luther, and he also very much appreciated Luther at one time, Box Library had about 80

theological works in it, and for the 1700s that's not bad, and among those works, a number of them were the works of Luther and of

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