Michael Sattler - Dean Taylor | KFW 2019

Gracious God, Heavenly Father, in the name of Jesus, it's a delight to call unto You again tonight and to pray that You would bless our dear brother as he stands in this place and teaches and instructs us and inspires us from the example of one Michael Sattler from history. Lord God. Father, thank You for this opportunity. Would You bless our dear brother, give him strength, inspiration, purge from his life any draws that would be a hindrance to this message tonight? Yes, Lord. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.

God bless you. Amen. Oh, it's such a blessing to be here. I could listen to Brother John Dee tell hymn stories and sing and hear the scriptures being read, and there's so much blessings. It's tremendous. As I bring up, we're given a sketch, a character sketch to talk about today, and I was given the topic of Michael Sattler. And when I was listening to those scriptures, I mean, you think, what a perfect set of scriptures to talk about these people who have lived these lives. And I think of that passage, you heard it repeatedly, of whom the world was not worthy, of whom the world was not worthy. And this line of testimony that the scripture gives us of those brave men and women who have lived their life not living their own life but seeking this kingdom to come, and it's so inspiring.

But I wanted to, before I get into my message, call your attention to the very last verse of chapter 11. It's easy to kind of look over it. This wasn't in the message, but I just really put on my heart as I heard this Bible memory. The last passage, the last half of the last verse is really, really important to the whole Hebrews 11, and it's going to be really important as we talk about Michael Sattler today.

And after it gives all these lines of all these incredible saints of God who the world was not worthy, it ends with this thought that they, without us, should not be made perfect. Did you catch that? That that whole list of people and all the generations that were showing through time and everything, and it finally gets to the last thing, and it says that they, all that they accomplished through Christ, that they, without us, should not be made perfect.

And remember, I can't remember if I have the picture of this in my message. Years ago, I went and visited a place where the oldest Hutterite Chronicles is placed in Bonham Community in South Dakota. And as I was going through there, I noticed there was these, I love this one section that shows a list of martyrs.

And in the English and in the German, it just lists the different areas where the different martyrdoms were, and then it would jump to the next district and jump to the next district. And I wanted to see this in the original handwritten version that the bishop keeps under a bed in Bonham, South Dakota.

And when I opened that up, I looked, and there was all these blank spaces left in the Chronicles. And as you ponder that, you're like, well, that's funny. That's not in the English or the German. And you start to say, well, why were all these huge, and one was a whole two pages of blanks.

And then it dawns on you. It's this that they, without us, should not be made perfect. The writers of that Chronicle had actually left whole sections that areas of martyrdom could be continually to be written in because it was part of being a Christian. It was part of being on fire for the Lord that we were going to have these kinds of things. We were going to have martyrdoms. We were going to have these things. And I said to the bishop, I said, did you notice that? He said, no, I've never noticed it before. I said, yeah, you're supposed to be written in this.

Yeah. So I praise the Lord as I look at Michael Sattler today, and we're given that topic.

It's very humbling to look at a man that so far passes me up, and I want to just, to some degree, be inspired by his life in the degree that he follows Jesus Christ. And I do not want to lift up anything else but Jesus Christ today. I thank you, Brother Kurt, prayed. And so as we look at this, I would like to make a few acknowledgments before I start and mention a few resources. You bring together a character sketch about a person, you get a lot of resources. So I wanted us to have a few acknowledgments here.

I'm trying to technology too here. All right. Let me start with this. First of all, I want to acknowledge the Kingdom Fellowship Weekend. I've been coming here for many years, and it's been a blessing to see it grow. And I don't know, particularly if you're a young person here today, I want you to make sure you appreciate how rare it is of a group like this and what of a blessing it is to bring people with a zeal for the Lord from many different backgrounds and many different experiences that we have. It's an amazing platform, the things that are discussed here and the groups that are brought together here. And I just wanted to give a blessing, first of all, to Kingdom Fellowship Weekend and what this represents and wanted to make sure you really bless these brothers that put this together because it is rare to get us together in this way.

And so I bless the Lord for that. I also recently, I've been moved to Boston working with Sattler College. So this was an interesting thing, and I couldn't resist Brother Joel when he asked me to speak on Michael Sattler. He had me. And so I had wanted to even dig deeper into the life of Michael Sattler. And so that's been an encouragement to me, and it's an example of what we're trying to represent there in Boston. I did want to say that we are, as we know, there's a college there, but we also have just recently started a one-year unaccredited track where all the focus is on our Bible languages, on apologetics, and the church history can just focus on those things within that one year.

If they like it, they can continue that on. But that's an excellent resource that I'm very blessed to be a part of that's coming up here, just starting this next, well, we have people coming in on Monday. So I bless the Lord for that. I'm looking forward to a year there. Also, another resource is kind of connected to the people that are here. We have a new thing called the Historic Faith, and we have both a booth and flyers back there that we have some information on this. And this is going to look at things of early Christianity, of the historic faith. And we're doing this as kind of new on a subscription basis, and we're trying to develop a group of people that can support each other, ask questions, and these types of things.

We're going to be developing more information and more things, more messages for that. So you can pick up a flyer there in the back, and I'm really blessed to see that. David Verso's, his teachings make up most of it at this point, and we've been really blessed to have a lot of his stuff on there, and we're hoping to get a lot more as time grows. I also want to thank, as I prepared all these things together, you see two booths out there. One is for Scroll Publishing. I've been with Scroll Publishing right when I got out of the army. It's been about 28 years, and I'm very blessed for the ministry that's here and the different resources of kingdom resources that they have.

And they have a booth out there, and I encourage you to take a look at that. And also, a very special blessing to Brother Andrew St. Marie, who wrote this incredible book about Michael Sattler and which I really leaned on to get preparing this message. He said he brought a bunch of extras there, so make sure you stop by Brother Andrew St. Marie's booth, and I've really appreciated his take. It has all the writings of Michael Sattler and also his life there represented in that book. I bought a case from him, a case of those for the students, and we've loved going through them. So okay.

So now, a servant on a historic figure, and you see what I have up there, a bunch of dusty books. And so it can be kind of scary giving a message on a character sketch on a historic figure. I'm wondering what are the things that I should share about Michael Sattler. And so I'm going to try to give some different points of his life, some of the details you can get from Brother Andrew's book on it. But I'm going to try to get some of the things that I think would make a big difference to us today, some of his legacy, some of the things that he wrote and how it affects us. And here's, I'm going to tell you something.

I have a strange allergy. I'm actually allergic to old books. It's true. For years ago, when I was working with the Remnant and my wife and I were digging up any old source of things, I realized that I break out into a rash when I'm reading old, old books. And hey, I used to work in the hospital, and I would literally take home surgical masks and gloves, and I'd get these old books and you'd order them. You couldn't get a lot of these on the internet, and I'd put these masks on and read them. And I realized I have some sort of an allergy to the mold or something about old books. I mean, it can get actually pretty bad.

Sometimes I can almost start wheezing from old books. And I really asked the Lord, well, why is this, Lord? You know I love these saints of old, and I love reading these old books. And I really felt the Lord telling me something through this strange allergy.

And that is to appreciate the past, but don't stay in the past.

That if I read those things, I felt the Lord giving me a little bit of a rebuke to not just be in a bunch of moldy books, to not just be something, but that there's a living message for today, that we, that they, without us, are not perfect, that God has a plan for the 21st century. God has something that he wants for us to do today. So while I'm bringing in this historic figure to us, as I'm talking about them, I talk about him and the Anabaptist that he helped to start.

My heart in this is that we can be inspired on how to let the Holy Spirit create the church today. So with that, I have a passage that I would like to remind us all before I mention anything of the writings of Michael Sattler. And it's this passage, God forbid.

Yay. Let God be true, but every man a liar. I want nothing of my own words, the words of Michael Sattler or the Anabaptist or anything to supplant the place of Jesus Christ. And if anything, are my words or Michael Sattler words or anyone else that is in error against the words of Jesus Christ, then it's exactly I want Jesus to be lifted up. Let God be true and every man a liar.

So Michael Sattler, what an incredible character. What an incredible man of God. If you pick up an encyclopedia or if you had these days, if you just go to the Wikipedia or something, you get this little blog that comes up about Michael Sattler. Michael Sattler, it says, this is right off the first line of Wikipedia, born somewhere around 1490 and died, we know exactly, on May 20th, 1527. He was a monk who left the Roman Catholic Church during the Protestant Reformation to become one of the early leaders of the Anabaptist.

And so this question then brings in lots of other questions. Now, interesting, I just for information's sake, I looked it up and that was 492 years, two months and 27 days ago that he was burned at the stake. 492 years, two months and 27 days.

And it says that he was a leader of an Anabaptist movement. And so I thought I would first start with a few important definitions to define some of the terms that I'm going to be using, define some of the terms when we talk about Michael Sattler and to help us to know, to speak the same language.

So I use this word Anabaptist. And so this is an interesting term. The Anabaptist, when you use the word Anabaptist, the Anabaptist is not a denomination. When I use the term Anabaptist or Anabaptism, I do not use it in a sense of a denomination. It is a hermeneutic. It is, in other words, a biblical principle. And I see within Anabaptism, I use it a lot and I frequently use the term to designate not a denomination, but to designate a method or a common way that people interpret the Bible. And so I do adopt this passage, but I do it with trepidation.

I'll tell you why I'm nervous about using the word Anabaptist. It's for both extremes. There's some pretty far-out things that are called Anabaptist. When you look at those that are, let's for whatever reason, use the ones on the far left, you have a very much tend to have a sloppiness in the scriptures. You have a weakness in the obedience of the Old Testament, the obedience of Christ. You have a weakness in the Old Testament. You have a many times speaking disparagingly about the words of Paul and holiness of life and separation sometimes are very weak, those that are represented, if we could use the term on the far left. And so I get nervous. I mean, even some emerging church and different terms like that would use the term these days with Anabaptist.

On the far right, you would have sometimes situations where people are very closed off. They're very distant. They're not open to evangelism or the obedience of Christ in terms of evangelism, church planting. Many times there's a strange attraction on the right to fundamentalist theology. There's even closet and sometimes outward militarism and usually sometimes in the far right, a disappointing view of economics and evangelism. So there's lots of reasons why to have carefulness when we use the term.

But I use the term because I think it's important to define some of those edges. I like the statement, what can be defined can be scrutinized. And I want you to ponder that just for a moment. What can be defined can also be scrutinized. When we say what our theological positions are, when we can see where they lead both to the left and to the right, when we can see some of the mistakes that we make continually through the different generations, it gives us an understanding of where our weaknesses are. And I think so with humility, we can look at this term and accept this term. And I feel it's very instructive because I do think there's some repeated mistakes that happen in the Anabaptist circles, if you would.

And that's from the time of the 1500s up until this very day. Nowadays, you hear this other term attached to it very commonly, and that would be neo-Anabaptist. And that's basically what generally people would call all of you, whether you like it or not, this term.

It's neo-Anabaptist. And that would fit both the far left and the far right. It would be all of us from different Mennonite groups, from different independent groups, from charity, from Boston groups, independents. And that's what the general term has been that people use to describe Anabaptist and Anabaptism. And you're thinking here today, well, I don't like that. Well, that's good. You're not supposed to necessarily like it. You wouldn't be a self-respecting Anabaptist if you were completely comfortable with it. And so it's part of it, but what I'm trying to do is to gather the way of thinking that is common to an Anabaptist understanding of the scripture. Because I believe that in that understanding of an Anabaptist understanding of scripture, that there are many strengths, but there are also some inherent weaknesses that we seem to keep repeating generation after generation.

And so I bring that out. There's an interesting book I read. I don't know if anybody have seen this book, Anabaptist World USA. It didn't get very popular. It was interesting. He went through the different Anabaptist churches and gives a sketch of it. And I remember I read it when I was a charity minister. And as we read through that, I was amazed, if you're humble with it, how he kind of pegs your group.

I mean, he goes through it and he shows the different groups, their strengths, their weaknesses, their things like that. And I had to kind of chuckle in this use of terms as Crable put in this book. I recommend the book. It's interesting. I wish they would update it.

It's a fascinating book. But here's my point again.

What can be defined can be scrutinized. And my heart is to gather us together to be able to critically in both a positive way, a positive way to look at both our strengths and our weaknesses. Another thing that recently was a title thrown around is intentionalist.

This was another term that another neo-Anabaptist, it was interesting, was an amusing critique by Corey Anderson. And he critiqued many of the groups like this Kingdom Fellowship Anabaptist Identity Conference and gave us the term intentionalist. And I've been certainly called a lot worse. And I think that it's an interesting and almost amusing term. But the thing is that I I I believe that when people like that write articles, that if you're humble and you realize it, that a lot of what he's saying is true and that many of the things that um that we can be honest about our strengths and our weaknesses, it would be good for us um to read those things and and let them reflect upon us.

I remember when I was at charity, Chester Weaver had written one on the Pietist. You all remember that tract he put out once on the Pietist. It was a title being thrown around, oh, 15 years ago. And again, every one of the criticisms that I thought that Chester brought were valid. Now, that doesn't mean I didn't still agree to some of the tenets that the intentionalist or the Pietist or whatever. But nevertheless, it's good for us to recognize some of these common things.

The things that you're going through in your church, the debates, you might think it's new that you're discussing whether or not it's okay to have a church standard or not a church standard, to have debates over missions in church, to have even common debates over like the atonement and whether there's a substitutionary atonement or there's penal substitutionary or there's the Christus Victor. It's amazing when you read through history how these are repeated debates and repeated discussions that go through our circles time and time again. And I think there's a reason.

And so as I look at Michael Sattler and I think about what he's done, I want to look at it with humility. And I want us to consider some of these things that have come from Anabaptism, come from what he and those brothers in Zurich did over almost 500 years ago and be blessed with it, encouraged with it, but instructed by it, both in the good things they did and also to look at some of the historical things that we've done that maybe were not all that great. So now, after those definitions and those things, I'm going to give you what I consider the Dean Taylor definition of the essence of Anabaptist. Get out your pen and paper.

I'm going to give it to you. All right. I got this from a letter from Conrad Grevel. And this was Conrad Grevel was writing a letter to his brother-in-law and his mentor, Dr. Jochen van Watt, who was named commonly called Vadian. He married his sister and he was, you know, part of those early Bible studies, but eventually took a position in St. Gall and eventually became mayor of St. Gall, which is north of Zurich in Switzerland. And he wrote him a letter saying, "Why are you leaving us? Why are you chasing after the world and its treasures instead of being with us?" And there's two things that come out in that letter that I consider the essence of Anabaptism.

And again, I'm using this not as a denominational sense, but as a biblical interpretation. Here's the two things. Number one, I believe the word of God without a complicated interpretation. And out of this belief, I speak.

So in other words, when you go through the scriptures and you, I've made the comment before, if we had an Anabaptist study Bible, you know, and if you had an Anabaptist study Bible, you'd get to like the passages where, you know, Jesus is saying, "Love your enemies." And you'd have the, you know, that that quintessential line. Then underneath, you know, the study Bible then tells you what it really means. But then under that, neath the line, the Anabaptist study Bible would say, "What this really means when Jesus said to love your enemies is that we should love our enemies." You know, and so the, I believe the word of God without a complicated interpretation. And out of this belief, I speak.

The permanence of marriage, the, our, our, our views on separation, the head covering, these, these things, they are simple. And it takes an awful lot of gymnastics to make them to not say what they plainly say. The other point I think is also very important, if not more.

The teaching of the Lord has been given for the purpose of being put into practice. Yeah. Oh, this is a big difference. And so if I was to put anything as the center, Jesus Christ as the center of our Christocentric hermeneutic, fancy word for the having Jesus Christ the center of our, the way we interpret our Bible, it is this, the teaching of the Lord has been given for the purpose of being put into practice, not to be explained away, not to be put on just a poster or something in different ways, but to be put into practice.

So let's talk about how Michael Sattler played into these things. So Michael Sattler was born there and right on the bottom of South Germany, Staufen, Germany, sometime in the, in the around the year 1490. If you see there, it's kind of like close to Switzerland and in this area, Strasbourg, you can kind of see to the left there. Oops. And eventually we know that he became a monk and was a prior of the Benedictine Monastery of St. Peter near Freiburg, Germany. This is a beautiful part of town, part of the country. Nowadays, if you go to Freiburg, it's where people go to buy cuckoo clocks. I bought a cuckoo clock when I was a soldier in the army over 30 years ago there in Freiburg.

It's a beautiful area, lots of forest and things. And there were this monastery would be there. It's, imagine it was even more forested back then. So it tells us something that from early on, he was a leader. He studied and that he had a passion to just give his life for God living in the monastery. And the fact that he was prior was meaning he was one of the top people of the monastery. It doesn't mean necessarily the abbot, but he was one of the leading people of the monastery.

And so he eventually became, oh, yeah, sorry. The Heterian Chronicles records these early Anabaptists with both the ones in Zurich and Michael Sattler. The Heterian Chronicles records that the original three leaders of the Anabaptists in Zurich had, quote, "a thorough knowledge of German, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew." Of Michael Sattler, the Chronicle records that he was, quote, "was a scholar in Hebrew and Latin with a wide knowledge of the Holy Scripture, a man who truly loved God." And so I would like to just bring out the fact that these early Anabaptist leaders were people that really studied the word of God. This is one of the very things that inspired us to use the name Michael Sattler for Sattler College, um, was this, we have, uh, in every major, we have this emphasis on learning the biblical languages and studying Hebrew and Greek and knowing how to read the word of God.

And so Michael Sattler was an educated person, not in a puffed-out way. And I think you see this in his life that he was still very humble. But when it came time for things being very important, Michael Sattler knew his Bible. And so I'm going to bring out, I think it's five things in particular that I'm going to bring out about Michael Sattler's life. And the thing that I'm going to bring out particularly right now is that he knew his Bible. And all these early Anabaptists knew their Bible. When Michael Sattler was in in the court and he was being tried and they were going back and forth on his different interpretations and his different things, he challenged the court there with this statement.

He says, "Therefore, you ministers of God, if you have not heard or read the word of God, sin for the most learned and for the sacred books of the Bible, of whatsoever language they may be, and let them confer with us in the word of God. And if they prove to us with the Holy Scriptures that we err and are in the wrong, we will gladly desist and recant and also willingly suffer the sentence and punishment for that of which we have been accused. But if no error is proven to us, I hope to God that you will be converted and receive instruction."

So this boldness that Michael Sattler had at this meeting was impressive. But I think some of that came. He had a confidence. Michael Sattler knew his Bible. When you see this beautiful train of people up here, you know, quoting the Hebrews 11, please let's keep this up. The 21st century needs churches that are completely devoted to the word of God, that the word of God, that Jesus speaks through the word of God to us and we shape our life after that. We're not making up our own philosophies. We're not following the dictates of this world, but it's the scriptures. It's the word of God.

And with that, it gave him a very refreshing take on the way he described the scriptures. He only had about two years of ministry out of Michael Sattler, but what he had was a blessing. And one of those particular ones that he wrote, he wrote in one of his different epistles that he had. And he had this idea of bewaring of the scribes and the Pharisees. And it's interesting the way he said that, you know, we can err in both sides.

He says, true. In other words, we can err by going about thinking that we can create our own righteousness by our own strengths. You know, that's what he said they did when they were Catholics and they would go on pilgrimages or different things like this. And he said, you know, this is not right. This is just not works. These works are vain. You can't just go working works and without having a faith in Christ. And he makes this very clear.

But then he also warned on the other end and he compared that like the Pharisees. And he also warned on the scribes. And using perhaps the term a little loosely, he said, the scribes write beautiful things. They preach beautiful sermons, but there's no change in their life. And so Michael Sattler did a beautiful job of of preaching a message that was completely devoted on Jesus Christ and his grace to create a real change in our life. And that that change would be real, not just changing in our vocabulary or our denominational differences or our change in, you know, different outward things merely, but a change in our life and faith that came out in everything that we were about.

And it's beautiful to hear him and the other early Anabaptists speak very clearly that this change happens from the grace of God inside of us. And when God gives us the grace of God, it's real and it's going to change you. It's impossible just to have an artificial faith.

And so this idea of him knowing his Bible is something that I think we should take note for the 21st century. In May of 1525, a group of peasants, a group of peasants marched on St. Peter's Monastery in protest of high taxes. Sometimes around this time, we know from history that he left the monastery. And so it's interesting, this group of this peasant revolt, it's a very interesting little thing in history. There's an interesting book I would recommend, it's kind of on a scholarly work, but it looks on this peasant revolt and how it affected and shows how some of the early Anabaptists would have been part of this before they were enlightened with the teachings of Christ on non-resistance and things.

And it's amazing looking at the passion, even in these peasants. And this group of people took over the monastery. And we know that shortly after that, he left. And Andrew, St. Marie talks a little bit about in his book on some speculations of what came out of that. He chose a godly wife. Michael Sattler married Margareta, a former Begin sister. Begins were a religious group, sort of like a nun, but they would have different orders and different levels that you could live in devotion to Christ. And that was, we don't know very much about her. There's one little statement about her in history, and I have it written up there. It says that somebody had written something about her and called her, quote, "a talented, clever little woman."

Amen. Reminds me of my wife. So, you know, and you just see the supportive, I don't know, you can read a lot into that idea of, and you see her spirit of following Michael through these very difficult times of this new movement and what it was. And I'm just inspired by what little we do know about Michael Sattler's wife.

And so it's encouraging. At her end, and I'll mention this hopefully, but at her end, you know, after Michael was finally burned at the stake, they pleaded with her, "Just give up. Just give up." She wouldn't do it. And so she also was faithful to the end.

So he came, Michael came to Zurich around 1525. The Anabaptists were already sort of getting started. And sometimes around was baptized in 1526. And again, Andrew brings a lot of good details in the book about this phase. After his baptism, and here's one of the points I'm going to come to that I think are important for us. He came to Strasbourg, now France, and some of the original reformers were there. He was able to reason with them from the scriptures, some of the famous early reformers, Wolfgang Capito. He stated actually Capito's house, Martin Booster, were there at the time. And these actually go and become part of the founders of the reformed people. But here's something that comes out of this little encounter that I think it's the second thing that I want to emphasize on Sattler's life, Michael Sattler's life that can be reflected on the church that I think we need today, that I need today.

And that is his emphasis on love.

This man was a scholar. This man was a zealous follower of Jesus Christ. But from what we have of his writings and his life and the testimony of even his enemies, this man was a lover who loved God and loved his brethren. And this comes out. As a matter of fact, when he went and disputed with these different reformers there in Strasbourg, that he left there after staying in Capito's own house. And as he wrote, he gives us this statement when he writes his letter to them. And he says, "Beloved brothers in God."

I don't know, there's something about that that just touches me. There's something about that desire to try in any way he could to see the good in these brothers in Strasbourg. And I see in his title, there's something that just rebukes me and that encourages me to have a more charitable spirit. Interestingly, even they writing back to him or writing of him after his death called him, and this is when he was condemned to heretic, "Dear friend in God." The things that they brought in Strasbourg were were important. That Christ came to save all those who would believe in him alone. Another one, he who believes in his baptized will be saved, but he who believes not will be damned.

Faith in Jesus Christ reconciles us with the Father and gives us access to him. Baptism incorporates all believers into the body of Christ, of which he is the head. Christ is the head of his body, of all believers or or the congregation.

As the head is minded, so must the members also be. Here's one that was controversial for them. The foreknown and called believers shall be conformed to the image of Christ. And Christ is despised in the world. So are also those who are his. He has no kingdom in this world, but that which is of this world is against his kingdom. Other things that he brought up, Christians are holy yielded and have placed their trust in their Father in heaven without any outward or worldly arms. In other words, you don't defend this faith with battlements and with armies.

The citizenship of Christians is in heaven and not on earth. Do you, do we still believe that point? Amen. The citizenship of Christian is in heaven and not on earth. We're little embassies of the kingdom of God. As my brother John D. likes to say, our job is that, let's all say it, that we would show, everybody knows it with me, the whole world what the whole world would look like if it would only follow the king. Thank you, brother John D. It's a great statement. We are citizens of the kingdom of heaven.

Next one, Christians are the members of the household of God and fellow citizens of the saints and not of the world. But they are true Christians who watch this. But they are true Christians who practice indeed the teachings of Christ.

Do we still believe this one? But they are true Christians who practice indeed the teachings of Christ. The last two, flesh and blood, pump and temporal, earthly honors and the world cannot comprehend the kingdom of Christ. In some, there is nothing in common between Christ and Belial.

These were hard statements, but still this spirit that he had, you know, one of the passages that I take a lot of guidance from is in Mark chapter nine. And the passage there, if you recall, in Mark chapter nine is when the apostles were nervous that people were casting out demons without them. And Jesus rebukes them. And you know, it makes you think, so would we rather have people be demon possessed than not do it our way?

I mean, I like us that we're zealous brothers, but if we've gone so far that we're nervous that people are getting their demons cast out because they're not exactly with us, then maybe we're erring a little too far. And Jesus rebukes them for that. And then at the very end of that passage in Mark chapter nine, there's this passage that I take a lot of comfort with. It says in Mark 9:49, "For everyone will be seasoned with fire.

And every sacrifice will be seasoned with salt." Salt is good, but if it loses its flavor, how will it season, how will you season it? But then he says this statement, "Have salt within yourself and peace with one another."

That's what I see with Michael Sattler. He was very seasoned. He was very salty about the things that he believed. When we see him standing in persecution, Michael Sattler knew what he believed. But at the end of the day, he was charitable and he had peace with one another. And you see this coming out in his statements.

I think maybe we need some more of this spirit. I think this spirit would do us good. Did not see if Jesus would have just said, "Have peace with one another," then we could maybe be in some sort of kind of fuzzy ecumenism, you know, everything goes and that kind of thing. He didn't say that. If he would just say, "Have salt within yourself," then maybe that would have had us be a little too edgy. But he said, "Have salt within yourself and peace with one another." I love that balance and I need more of that balance in my life. I think it's a beautiful balance from his, I'm going to read just a few things from to the church, to the church from prison.

He says, "Furthermore, dear fellow members of Christ, you should be admonished not to forget love, without which it is not possible for you to be a Christian congregation." You know what love is from the testimony of Paul, our fellow brother who says, "Love is patient and kind, not jealous, not puffed up," sorry that, "not ambitious." And he goes on to give the teachings of Paul and says that this is not, this is not to be this way. And he then encourages us that even when we have to excommunicate someone, that if we do this in a harsh manner, in a way that's not right, then we've lost the Christian faith. And he's rebuking the church to do this from prison.

There's another letter I read in Anabaptism. This was Jacob Ammons, one of the beginning people of the Amish. And his younger brother, years later after Jacob Ammons, there's a precious letter where he gives encouragement to a church that's in trouble, a church that's going through church splits and and and things that are going wrong. And yes, back then they had those too. Boy, if there's one thing you read in history, you realize the more and more you dig deep, you know, really there's not a lot of things that change.

I even read the Bible so much different. When I read Paul now and I read about the different things that he goes through and different things, and I, yeah, we're the same. And God still is also the same. Praise God. And he wants to do these things. Anyway, in this letter, he gives rebukes to the elders and he says, you know, elders and to the congregation that we must have love. And at the very end of the letter, he writes this, Uli Ammons writes, and to this church in trouble, he says, "If it should happen that a minister or elders' initial presentation on some important matter was not generally understood to be the best, and dissension then follows."

I think some of you could imagine. And some supported the elders and his initial presentation, while the opposing party, though they could not support it, then we think they should not argue about it to the point where love is lost.

That's a good idea. And then he says this, "Oh, if only this could happen." This is the very beginning of the Amish. This is Jacob Ammons, I think younger brother. "Oh, if only this could happen, which would be very necessary and good, that all elders and ministers would follow Christ's example and all that is good, and especially in humble and scriptural obedience to God, and could give the people a good model, and that a domineering nature, which is very close related to destructive pride, would be given no place."

This early spirit, the spirit in early Anabaptism, particularly in the Swiss, I find very encouraging. I needed more in my life. And when I read these examples from Michael Sattler and his and his take on it, it's it challenges me. The next thing is evangelism.

Really, the evangelism of the early Anabaptists is incredible. It in the book you have, and again, Andrew takes us through in his book on, he comes to a little town, it's like a suburb of Strasbourg called Lar. And he goes and he begins to um evangelize there. There's an amusing letter in there where one of the people that were evangelized says some bad things about Michael Sattler and just gives you some insights again on even his evangelism um techniques. But what did this look like in early Anabaptism?

What did evangelism and missions look like in early Anabaptism? And it's very challenging. Within days after the movement, with death sentences still over their heads, the early Anabaptists went into neighboring cities with remarkable success. In one account, Conrad Grebbel went to North and St. Gall and interrupted an Easter parade with the preaching of the kingdom of God. And on that day, brought over 500 people left an Easter parade to go follow and get baptized right there in the water and follow Christ.

Now, you know, if you were to think and you're the persecution of things are coming, what would you do if persecution was coming on the church? I asked this question. Oops.

So if you were going through all this and you've gone through all this terrible persecution and you had the choice, do you arrest? What do you think they did? Did they arrest? All right, you saw it said, no, they did not rest. Another thing. Oops.

Would you hide? I don't think anybody would blame these early brothers or any of those what we read in Hebrews 11 that they would hide out for a while. But they didn't hide. They didn't hide. All right, how about here's one.

All right. Would they hold a seminar? Yeah, sorry. They did get together, but when they got together like this, they expected change immediately. And so the big question then, would you go? And the answer is yes, they went. And here's why. And I don't want you to miss this part of why Anabaptism went in so much into evangelism and missions at the very beginning. And it's for a really good reason. It's for this reason.

Does everyone see this written up here? Everybody say it with me. No go, no low. Say it again. No go, no low. Now let me give you where this comes from. It comes from this. And Jesus spake into them in Matthew 28, saying, "All power is given unto me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore and teach all nations." That's making disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe, watch this, all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even into the ends of the earth.

I know what you're thinking. Well, you don't know what it's like in our church. We've got all these problems. And when we get past all these problems, we're going to evangelize. And when we go through these different things, when we get it together, then we're going to do something. But right now we've got so many church problems.

I'm okay. I can understand to some degree, but we're using this as an excuse way too much because the order that you see from Jesus Christ is with the power of the Holy Spirit, trusting him in faith, go. And then what?

Lo, I will be with you. You see, here's the thing. What makes Anabaptism different is what those two things. I believe the Bible with a simple interpretation and out of this I speak. And the second one was what?

The teachings of the Lord were meant to be put into practice. And they saw this as a command. We don't give up on our permanence of marriage, on swearing of oaths, on on on these different things, on non-resistance. Why do we take these commands to evangelize and put them in a totally different category? They were the commands of Christ. Just look at 15:27 for me with me for a second. So Felix Mons was killed January 5th, 15:27. Felix, Michael Sattler of May 21st, the same year. They got together um before that in February of 20 of Schleidheim in February 24th to hammer out a few things for the church. They had a synod in in in Augsburg on August the 20th.

And they brought 60 ministers already now in the same year. 60 ministers now are gathering. And why are they gathering? To have a conference of how they're going to take the gospels to the ends of the earth. And when they do that, they they they write out different places of where they're going. They had a seminar. Okay, now in five years, guess how many of those 60 ministers were left?