A Warning from History: Christians and Politics Part 3 - Dean Taylor

Lesson Transcript

We are thrilled to present "Christians in Politics: A Challenge from History," now available as a free Historic Faith course. You can watch it on the Historic Faith website and right here on the Sound Faith channel. In these unprecedented times, it's more vital than ever for Christians to stand firm and reflect on the kingdom we are called to serve. And today we're going to be looking at a warning from history, and I'm going to start off with this video. On Facebook and YouTube.

I said you never thought you'd see this in Holmes County, huh? Make liberals cry again. Trump 2020. It's clever. That flag's a little small, but it still counts. It sure does. And so I know since this is going to be a lot of interesting pictures on this session, that it's very likely that people will just come to this session, but I really do want to encourage you to check out the other two.

The other two we've talked about, number one, the first session was a kingdom worldview, and I called it "The Paradigm is Changing." And there I was looking at the different ideas of a worldview, like the Kyperian worldview and the Constantinian and the forming of the Constantinian synthesis. And we looked at some of that in detail, and I encourage you to check that out.

The second session, we just went to the basics and looked at what is a kingdom worldview, what's an Anabaptist worldview of politics, what's an early church and patristic concept of there. And we were able to look at scriptures and early Christian writings and looked at this idea of a worldview. And I really encourage you to check that out too. But today we're going to talk about just a general warning from history. Because here's the thing, I'm not going to give you a verse or anything to say voting's a sin.

Okay, I'm not going to say that. And so. Necessarily. But I am going to say that what I'm going to show today, hopefully, is that the leaven of Herod, as Jesus refers to it, leads to a political involvement of when the church gets involved with politics. We saw that even with the early church and things on the last episode. But we're going to see something a little closer to our time and closer to us.

I'm going to take us to Mennonite churches that lost their way because they got involved with politics and what it ended up doing with their witness and to their church. So we're going to look at a warning from history. All right, so not to wear these videos and these pictures out, I just want to stop here and reflect on this a little bit. Supporting your president, supporting your country is not wrong. Voting is not necessarily wrong.

My bigger concern in this is not that you're voting, it's that you've lost your calling of why the real purpose of what your forefathers have said, for what the word of God has shown us, and you had something beautiful and you're losing it. And Jesus said, "If the salt has lost its flavor, well, then how can it be seasoned again?" And my biggest concern in all this is that we're losing so much.

And I know you're going to say, "Well, there's not that many people that went out to the parade," and I grant you that, and that's good. But I have a feeling that you know as well as I do that many in your congregation are getting involved and pulled into this kind of political action. And I understand the temptation, I understand it. You know, as conservative Anabaptists, we've learned how to keep close communities, and that's good. That's really good.

But I think that somehow, maybe along the way, we've forgotten why we started our communities in the first place. And that's what bothers me the most about these things. It's a symptom. It's not the problem. It's a symptom of the problem on so many different levels, on so many different levels. Jesus gave us the church to be communities and engage with this world, but offering his cure for humanity, the cure of Jesus for humanity.

These politics, and as we studied in the last session, God gives us these human governments to rule the world and to rule it with a sword. But he also gave us the church as embassies of the kingdom of heaven in this world to represent to the whole world what the whole world should look like if it would follow King Jesus. Getting involved with either the right wing or the left wing or any wings other than Jesus, it's losing. It's losing our salt.

So, in review, since I know a lot of you will skip the other ones, but in review, we looked at some of these things and looked at that many conservative evangelicals and concerned evangelicals and Catholics and Orthodox people are also beginning to look at our political system and seeing, "Hey, there's a problem. Maybe we should check out the way they looked at this in the early church before Constantine.

Maybe we should look at the way the Anabaptists have looked at this through the years." And what concerns me, as I brought out, is just when the evangelicals are beginning to look at some of these Anabaptist views and things, we're seeing things like this where the Anabaptists are once again being tempted to return to their politics. And I understand the times that we're living in are very, very challenging, very challenging. In my lifetime, it's certainly the worst.

I asked my father, who's pushing 80 now, "Was it this worse in the 60s?" He said, "It's much worse in the 60s." In the 60s, you'd have a revolt or something like that, but not taking over whole cities. He really believed that it's the worst that he'd ever seen in his life. City after city, we realize that there's problems, but we're coming now to this kind of dynamic where we have these polar views and conservative right saying that you'd have to vote for one, the left saying the other.

And it grieves me that where no one is being able to truly see this pre-Constantine concept of the church in the world. And we've had coronavirus and all that comes to play. And as we've looked at the way that after Constantine and after this Constantinian synthesis has grown and polished through the centuries, I think that we have to understand that this Constantinian synthesis that was perfected in the Middle Ages has come down to us dressed in Brooks Brothers' coats, Brooks Brothers' suits, and megachurches.

But still, the seed, as we spoke in the other episodes, the seed of this Constantinian synthesis, this Christendom that forms this church and state together is still there causing trouble. And what I'm going to show today is how people who usually traditionally are by their standards and by their forefathers have had a view to stand against the ways of Constantinian synthesis have lost it when they've got involved with politics.

I truly believe, as Jeremiah warns us in Jeremiah 2:13, that we are trying to use the whole world is trying to use a system that is broken. Jeremiah 2:13 says, "For my people have committed two evils. They have forgotten me, that is, they've forgotten his way, who he is, the fountain of living water, and hewn themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water." Now, I know what you're going to be thinking as you're going to start watching some of these pictures.

You're going to say, "Well, times are different now, right? Times are different." But here is something that I want you to seriously consider. Sorry, I'm going to change to my other reading glasses here. Here's something that I really want you to consider.

If there hasn't been a repentance in this Constantinian synthesis and in this Christendom concept, if there hasn't been a true repentance that we see that there's a virus in our systematic theology and we're still just tweaking the same systematic theology, the same theology, given similar circumstances again, will very likely once again create the same result. Idea has consequences. You see what I mean?

That if we don't change anything and then say, "Yeah, things are different now, we live in better times," but if things are getting crazy again, we could end up with the same results. You know, again, in the other episodes, I looked at it and I want to reflect upon it again that Jesus gave us this kingdom on this earth. And he said that, "My kingdom now is not from here. If my kingdom were of this world, then my servants would fight." He did tell us not to come out of the world.

It's okay to criticize the kingdom Anabaptist view of politics when we are cloistering. It is okay. Jesus did call us to engage with this world. And he also, the scriptures gave us a very clear concept of human government giving us a governing the world. And it goes like this far and no further. And so we don't try to turn it into some weird pacifist politics of this world, but we do take our place, the church, as embassies in this world.

We don't run this world, but we live as Christians by faith and grace in the ways of Jesus Christ without compromise in this world. But we don't try to explain away the Old Testament or the laws or the things of the Old Testament, but we follow Christ. And we went to that in detail in the last episode. We also looked at the early church and the way that for 300 years before Constantine, this is the way the church believed. And when we gave that up, the price is very dear.

So I can remember when I first came to Lancaster County, it was about 2001, I think. And when I came to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, you know, coming through my books and stuff, you know, and thinking how Anabaptists thought and Mennonites and Amish and all that, I remember right during that time, I think that the President Bush was coming, he was landing at Lancaster Airport, and it was a big deal. And he was really wanting the Mennonite and Amish vote.

Here was the paper, President Urges County, "We need your help now." And I remember I was at work, I was doing anesthesia in Ephrata Hospital there. And the chief anesthesiologist was, I was just getting there and I was talking to him and he was asking me about this. He said, "What do you Mennonites and what do you guys do with voting?" And I said, "Oh, Anabaptists don't vote." "No." And he was a Jewish man. And I remember that we had an Amish patient right before us.

He said, "Are you kidding me?" He said, "No, no, we don't vote." I said, "Go ahead, ask him." And there was an Amishman sitting there that we were about to start the procedure with. And I remember I'm just new to Lancaster County. And let's say his name is Amos. So he said, "Hey, Amos. So are you going to vote in this election?" Me just standing there, of course, he's not going to vote. This is going to be great. And he turns around and says, "Well, you better believe I'm going to vote in this election.

I voted in the last one. I'm certainly going to vote in this one." And I sit there with egg on my face, learning. Dean, you've got a lot to learn. I'm still learning that I have a lot to learn. For many times, we've seen the church, we've seen people give up this thing. And I want to give a warning now with this current politics that's going on.

We're left with this sort of dualism, this view, and you see either Christians on the left, like Shane Claiborne or Ron Snyder saying, "You've got to vote for Biden." You see MacArthur saying, "You've got to vote for Trump." And it's very distinct. Shane Claiborne wrote Jesus for president. Anyway, so we're faced with these things that, you know, the things that the left supports, the things that the right support.

And truly, I believe if you are a follower of Jesus Christ and you really believe Jesus meant every word he said, you should feel there's a problem here. I mean, you know, abortion has become like the big issue. But so the conservatives protect the babies, the life when they're in the womb, but once they leave the womb, where there's a lot of problems with warfare and things like this, when we come to the left, there's all kinds of issues with abortion and things like this.

And there's all kinds of things that go back and forth. And I think that it's on purpose. The kingdoms of this world are not going to be ran. But I've seen so many times in my life when the church gets involved with this, what we end up losing. And as we have to choose, I saw this meme, if you would, online, and I choose evil. Someone wrote up here, "The lesser." By choosing the lesser evil, we're still choosing evil. Constantly choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil.

Spurgeon even said, "Of two evils, choose neither." Well said, Spurgeon. And so here we are facing this. Here we go again in this current election. What is it going to be for the church? What are we going to choose? I hope that we can learn to live by the salt of the earth that God has created us to be. Live like the salt of the earth God has created us to be and not choose. Again, I've repeated this verse in the last one, but I'm going to repeat it now as the battle of Jericho is coming close in Joshua 5:13.

"And it came to pass when Joshua was by Jericho that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, there stood a man over against him with a sword drawn in his hand." It was an angel. "And Joshua went unto him and said unto him, 'Are you for us or for our adversaries?'" Imagine asking God now, "Who would Jesus vote for?

Whose side are you on?" And the angel answered, and he said, "Nay, but as captain of the host of the Lord am I now come." I call the people of God to live by our King Jesus Christ and be the same way. He's asking us to pray that God's will would be on earth like it is in heaven. And he wants us to be an embassy of what this looks like. To put it in a phrase, we should be what is to become. In other words, and that we know that in the beginning, the kingdom was a garden.

At the end of time, it would be from the rising of the sun till it's going down. But now we are to be to the world like an embassy of heaven. We are to be what is to become. So just giving a quick summary and reminding us of what the Schleidheim Confession, the first Anabaptist Confession in 15 to 27 said about politics and the engagement of the church in politics.

It says, "Finally, it is observed that it is not appropriate for a Christian to serve as a magistrate because of these points." And I'm quickly summarizing for time. "The government magistrate is according to the flesh, but the Christians is according to the Spirit.

The worldlings are armed with steel and iron, but the Christians are armed with the armor of God with truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation, and the word of God." And I want to point out that we were never intended to be some strange cloistered group, but to fight a spiritual battle for God. And I think it's because we miss this point of being engaged with this world and fighting these spiritual battles that we end up with some of these strange responses. So I'm going to get into the different eras.

I'm going to mainly focus on the World War I and World War II. Just for time's sake, there's an interesting book that just came out, recently came out by James Lehman and Stephen Nolt at the Elizabethtown Young Center. Great place there. And I'm going to skip for that right now and just go into what has happened in the World War I. So we're going to see, we're going to watch what happened with the church getting involved with politics in World War I.

If you're an evangelical or Catholic or Orthodox watching this today, it's interesting. Go to your history and look what happened here, because the more conservative the group, the more you fell in both, at least the second group in this, the same result as you'll see here. So let's look at World War I. In World War I, there were some interesting things that really finally brought the Mennonites, particularly the brethren and the Mennonites to voting. And it was the issue of prohibition.

So prohibition had started to go and people started to rise up in churches and in meetings, start saying, "Let's pass laws to end the selling of alcohol." And this got really interesting. I mean, and actually a lot of the women really got into this with this woman's holy war. And you had people coming in and hacking, you know, barrels of gin and things like this. And it was exciting. And it was amazing how the politics came.

And there were posters and you see these and you're just making it, okay, this is clearly an issue that any self-respecting Christian would vote for was the point that they tried to make. So, you know, vote. If you're going to vote for alcohol, you're going to be voting against children and mothers and corruption. So vote dry. And some of the evangelists started really getting into this, particularly Billy Sunday and many evangelists like him.

And the Mennonite churches and the brethren churches that were more involved with revivalism got more into this. I got a little clip I'll show you here from Billy Sunday where he's speaking on some of this prohibition. You get a flavor of the times. Listen carefully for it. America needs a tidal wave of the old time religion. America needs to be taken down to God's bathhouse and the hose is turned on her.

And the time isn't far distant when the wheels of God's judgment are going to go sweeping through this old God-hating world. And I want to take a pledge in this audience to join me in the pledge that you will never rest until this old God-hating, Christ-hating, whiskey-soaked, sabbath-breaking, blaspheming, infidel bootlegging old world is bound to the cross of Jesus Christ by the golden chains of love. Amen. Amen. Let me see if my computer screen is blocking there. I'm going to check real quick. No, it looks okay.

All right. So preachers like that were going through, and you could imagine they were like, "Okay, this is an issue that surely would bring you to the polls." And people started to form temperance groups and getting together. And I mean, this was really raising a lot of attention. Here's Carrie A Nation. I love this name with her hatchet in her hand.

And they brought it to the Mennonites and the brethren people in these big areas and said, "Okay, I know you guys don't usually vote, but surely, surely this is an issue that you can vote." And they started to get involved.

And they began to start having temperance leagues and different things that they were forming in that way and say, "Surely this is something you got to vote." And so finally you started to get different Mennonite and brethren and Mennonite brethren groups together and starting to come and become and come more politically active. And here was a fellow that made his grade in those days, Martin Grove Brumbach, an early German Baptist, and in 1899 wrote the history of the German Baptist. Excuse me.

And so he gets involved in this in a very interesting way. And so here, even in his 1899 book, he says, "Temperance is a time-honored and Bible-sanctioned principle. The church from its beginning has refused to allow any members to engage in the liquor, traffic, to drink intoxicants, or to use tobacco.

The oldest temperance society in the country is the Church of the German Baptist Brethren." And so it's interesting that even in 1899, you see a young Martin Grove Brumbach getting involved, and particularly with the brethren churches being more involved with revivalism, but the Mennonites did too. This brought them to vote and got them involved in politics. So what happened? Well, one thing happened is they got it passed by.

Eventually, literally on December 18th, 1917, America passed the 18th Amendment that literally outlawed the selling and production of alcohol in America. It was amazing that they pulled this off. But what was the collateral damage of this is the question that I want to look at. What happened? Well, interesting that it was sort of short-lived. The effectiveness of the temperance movement only lasted a few years.

And in 1933, March 23rd, 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt signed a bill allowing for the sale of alcohol, and he publicly commented, "I think this would be a good time for a beer." Tragically, a lot of Billy Sunday's sons actually were very involved with alcoholism and terrible things that happened to them. But the repercussions were even bigger than that in the Mennonite and brethren world.

And the political leaven, the leaven of Herod, of the spirit of politics, entrenched itself into the fabric of conservative Christians, including the Anabaptists. And remember that Brumbach? Well, we ended up with an Anabaptist governor out of this. True story. So it was then that the inevitable happened. All this increased political involvement and the agenda of the Church of the Brethren culminated in one of their own men, Martin Grove Brumbach, being elected as governor of Pennsylvania. Who would have thought?

And so as this happened, as soon as he got into the, how's he going to do it? How is now this Anabaptist with this Anabaptist convictions of non-resistance and things? What's he going to do once he's the governor of Pennsylvania? But as soon as he was in there, a riot broke out in Pittsburgh. And acting in response to that, he called for a militia to come out and quiet the rebels. And then when World War I broke out, he saw this, while even some evangelicals were seeing this as questioning it, even D.L.

Moody and some of the different evangelicals were questioning World War I, Brumbach saw it as a holy war and even required his cabinet to give a loyalty oath or face dismissal. And this kind of contradiction caused all kinds of problems. There's an interesting, there's a biography about this time by Judy Yoder called Vera's Journey. And she says something very interesting about this time.

Listen to what she says, a report on what it was like when Brumbach was getting involved and all these people were kind of doing these things. She said, "The brethren who for a time had been moving in step with believers in other Protestant churches suddenly found themselves in the cross current of their non-resistant backgrounds and the position of those that had been working with the outreach of the church.

A specially called conference of elders issued a statement against military involvement, but it was quickly withdrawn under government pressure. Many brethren felt confused about where their church stood, where they stood. Hadn't they worked hand in hand with other churches in social reform? Hadn't they joined forces with them on the mission field?" And she says that when they started going and getting involved with these different politics and different things, it just caused a confusion.

And that was what made it trouble even for the drafts that many of the brethren people that went to the draft were saying, "Well, one of your bishops is running for president against Wilson. I mean, how could you say you're a pacifist?" And it hurt them. Even some Hutterites during the time, maybe unrelated, but some Hutterites at the time in World War I actually became martyrs during this time. So the usual thing that you hear is this. It's getting so bad you just have to vote. That's what people are saying now.

But what I want to show you about World War I was that good intentions, but still taking the worldly ways to handle the and using the state to solve the problems of this world ended up making the salt lose its flavor and ended up even hurting the church and causing even trouble for their witness. And it's sad. People say it's getting so bad you just have to vote, which reminds me of another story.

So I remember in another election, I'm driving down 322 in Lancaster County, and I was getting a hankering for some pretzels. This pretzel shop, I think owned by either Joe Wanger Mennonites, Horse and Buggy Mennonites, 35ers or something. And I pull in there, and as I pull in there to get my pretzels and take them home, I notice there were two pieces of paper, two stacks of paper on the shelf there. And I looked at them while they were getting my pretzels ready. And then one was some voter registration cards.

And the other was a set of papers that were telling you why any self-respecting Christian would vote for the Republican Party. And so I called out to the very plain dressed Horse and Buggy Mennonite lady working there. I said, "So since when did the old order Mennonites start getting involved with politics?" And you know what she said? "It's getting so bad, you just have to." And I said, "Do you ever know what happened in the Anabaptist church when we got involved with politics?

It never usually ended up good for the church or for the world." And she didn't have much to say about that, but handed me my pretzels and I went my way. But I saw something there. I keep seeing this, that we're losing our witness. We're losing this saltiness. Let me take you to World War II. In World War II, it's much more devastating.

In World War II, we now can look on it, and historians and sociologists and preachers or whatever can look on it and say, "Well, we should have been able to obviously see that this was evil." This that you're seeing right here is a belt buckle that was on every one of the Nazi soldiers' uniforms proclaiming "Gott mit uns," God with us. And this idea that the German people and the German armies and what they were doing, they really believed that they were doing good things for God.

And people all over, particularly Germans, but all over the place, America we're going to see in Canada in particular, were saying, "You know, Hitler's doing a lot of good." And this is some of the biggest point that I want to make, that now we can look back and say, "Wow, what were they thinking?" Is that when we give our allegiance to these things that are not of Christ, generations from now, people are going to look at us and say, "What were you thinking?" And here's the point that I really want you to get.

The worst atrocities ever inflicted upon mankind have been committed by men who think they do God a service. I don't care if it's a secular thing or whatever, but in their mind, the worst atrocities ever inflicted upon mankind have been committed by men who think they do God a service. And this is what's happening over and over again.

Well, with the Mennonites, it was sort of a in Germany and in the German area in those regions, some in Russia and Ukraine, we're going to look at, and other German spots, we're watching this and what was happening in World War I. They were seeing all the stuff with the Bolshevik Revolution and the communists coming, but now with Hitler and what they're wanting, they're just wanting to have the Germans to be able to get their land back and get what's rightly coming to them.

And they began to watch this and get excited about it and say, "You know, this guy's doing some good stuff." And so they actually had a conference on September 10th, 1933. And at the end of that conference, the Mennonites, watching what was going on, decided they were going to send a telegram to Adolf Hitler. And here's what I want you to do.

I don't want you to so quickly judge them, but I want you, whether you're falling to the left or to the right, and whether you're from Anabaptist background or evangelical, I want you to consider this. Check your heart on what you're thinking is solving the problems of this day. I say that system is broken. But anyway, the Mennonites were joining together. They had a conference and they wrote this telegram to the Führer.

The background I just used, I made up, but the word for word is a telegram that was written to Adolf Hitler.

And they said this, "To Chancellor Adolf Hitler, Berlin, the conference to Chancellor Adolf Hitler, Berlin, the conference of East and West Prussia Mennonites, assembled today in Teggenhegen, Free State of Danzig, feels deep gratitude," watch now, "for the powerful revival that God has given our nation through your energy and promises joyful cooperation in the upbuilding of our fatherland through the power of the gospel, faithful to the motto of our forefathers.

No other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ." Wow. They had a conference, they discussed what was going on, and they felt that this was within this foundation and wrote Hitler. Now, I'm sure Hitler didn't have time to respond to every telegram he's getting, but he did to the Mennonites. And he wrote this, "For your loyalty and your readiness to cooperate in the upbuilding of the German nation expressed in your letter to me, I express my sincere thanks, Adolf Hitler." Wow.

During this time, more and more, and we'll see it a little bit also with the conservative evangelicals, the Bible-believing people took this, not following this two-kingdom concept that the early church had, but taking this and seeing this as a cure for humanity instead of Christ's cure for humanity. It was everywhere. We're not talking about just little pockets. The more you dig into this, the more you realize it was everywhere.

The only ones that really, an example, I can give an example that stood against us was a first-generation Anabaptist group, which has now become the Bruderhof, was Emmy and Eberhard Arnold. Eberhard Arnold was studying the early church, reading the early Christians, reading the Bible and beginning to say, "You know, it should be different." He ended up starting communities and he even went to America to visit the Hutterites and came back.

And he, instead of being a cloister somewhere or something like that, this comes out in a book by Emmy Bart, an Embassy Besiege, he actually wrote a letter. This is the response of being prophetic in your generation. He literally wrote a letter to Adolf Hitler and sent him his book saying, "Your system is wrong. The way of Jesus Christ is better," and exhorted him and rebuked him. And of course, it didn't work too well for them. They were taken out and the community was raided.

The Mennonite Central Committee actually helped them to relocate into England, and then they relocated them into Paraguay, down there where there were some Mennonite settlements in Paraguay. But there was something interesting happening in Paraguay also at the same time. Paraguay, the Mennonites there being German-speaking, were watching what was happening in Germany. We're also getting excited.

Now, it's interesting, Eberhard Arnold and the future Bruderhof people that were being taken there by the Mennonites of the United States, taken to Paraguay, didn't realize that what was happening there was, "Hey, we're watching and becoming Nazis themselves." So here they wrote a telegram also to Adolf Hitler with this expression.

And they said this, "With greatest excitement, we German Mennonites of the Paraguayan Chaco follow the events in our beloved motherland and experience in spirit the national revolution of the German people. We are happy that in Germany, after a long time, a government that freely and openly professes God as creator stands at the head of the nation." Watch what they say next.

"With special sympathy, we hear that the current government takes seriously the realization of Christian principles in social, economic, and cultural life and especially emphasizes the protection of the family." It's amazing. You know, when I see this and you try to just get into their minds and their heart of what they're thinking, we saw them as someone who was, you know, we don't want socialism. We don't want to vote for socialism. We see what's happening to our cousins there in Russia.

He's supporting the family. This powerful revival that's happening. And this is what happened. So what Eberhard Arnold and the Anabaptist group there that was going to Paraguay, they got into the capital of Paraguay, went into the church there, and this is what they saw. It's actually in their book, No Lasting Home by Emmy Bart also. And when they were in there, over an altar, so a table here in the Mennonite church is a picture of Adolf Hitler.

They were astounded and told them, "This is not the way it should be." And was able to preach to them and to tell them that this isn't right. They just told them about all that they went through and tried to wake them up. But nobody heard then. Later, after the war, they heard, and to their credit, they did publicly repent. But what about now? What about us? What spirit is affecting us? It's interesting. One of the youth leaders wrote this, a youth leader riding home to Paraguay when he was visiting Germany.

While studying Germany, he said this. He says, "If one lives through such weeks in Germany, one is drawn involuntarily under the spell of the Führer and can do nothing else than confess oneself a national socialist." He says, "It's like a revival." And this reminds me, so my wife and I were living, stationed in Germany when we became conscience objectors. This is me at the Berlin Wall.

And as I became a conscience objector and I began to look into the Mennonite church, I started visiting some of the Mennonite churches there. And I remember one in particular, I wish I knew exactly where I was, but one in particular that we were taken to was a community and they had some of their churches and we were singing some songs, me and another couple, Rick and Don Shirley. And we were singing some songs in that church.

And I noticed how churches in Europe will have all these plaques of people who served during the military. And so afterwards, when we were eating, I asked one of the older brothers there, he was 72 years old when I was, I don't know what, 20. He was 72 years old and this is 1991. I said, "Why are there military things in the Mennonite church?

I thought Mennonites were always pacifist." And he just kind of smiled and he said, "Dean, this is a 72-year-old man." When I was becoming a conscience objector in Germany, he said, "Dean, my father was actually Quaker. And on my bar to this day, I wish I had time to take you there. I've left a painting of a symbol that they voted that meant to vote for Nazis." He said, "I've left it there as a reminder because, Dean, I'm telling you, this is a 72-year-old man in 1990. He's old enough to remember.

It swept us like a revival, just like this guy said. Just like this guy who said, 'You're under the spell of this. It swept us like a revival,' he said." And that struck me and it stuck with me. And so I think of the way we get involved with this, and Jesus calls it 11 of Herod. We know how Phariseeism can be 11, right? Politics can also be 11. You see, it's not so much just the voting itself. It's what this does to us time and time again. Let me take you to another place, Ukraine and the Russia.

So Ukraine, to give you a little idea of where it is. So Germany is right here and Russia here, and Ukraine was right in between. And so here's Greece and all that. And there was a lot of German areas here. And I really particularly, I like the scholarship that Benjamin Gusen, he's here a professor here at Harvard, and he's written a book here, Chosen Nation, and really done a lot of study into the German-speaking people of this area in Ukraine. And it's some fascinating but terrible stuff.

So he shows here in his book, there's a lot of different regions. You can see some of the areas where they were large Germanic areas. And this is where the Russian Mennonites had colonies. The Hutterites, like even the Hutterites, were up in this area. Molotna, Kortitza, different colonies here, Hütterthal, were in these areas. And these were all German districts. And so as you could imagine, here's an old map you can see of the Hütterthal and Molotna, that type of thing.

You can imagine that the Nazis who were wanting now to come against Russia and come against what the Bolsheviks were doing and all that, and the early Stalinists and all that, were really playing hard on these German settlements. And it's tragic what happened to the Mennonites. So I'm going to show you some pictures, and they're just very shocking. So here's a picture of Heinrich Himmler, who's considered the architect of the Holocaust.

In a Mennonite colony in Hauptstadt, one of the largest Mennonite colonies, here with the Russian, here were some Red Cross people and the Mennonites that were there. And also he came here to speak to Johann Claussen, which I'm going to show there. And the Mennonites had just completely embraced this. Here's an interesting picture that is brought out in that book. And so here you have, it looks almost like a Hutterite home today or a colony Mennonite.

So here a Mennonite lady here, and she's sewing and doing her things there, Germanic clock there up on the wall here. There's a picture of Adolf Hitler. Here's a really shocking picture. Again, in this colony, so that as the Germans would come in, they would form little military units out of these Mennonites. They quickly gave up their non-resistance, bought the love and the hair, and started getting into the warfare.

And this is actually in the Hauptstadt colony where they are actually an SS regiment of Mennonites under the Nazi, an SS troop of Mennonites at the Hauptstadt colony. Shocking. Here's a picture that he brings out. This is actually the cover of his book, of Gusen's book, Dr. Gusen's book. And he brings out that in other historians and other times have called this trying to show that there's a contrast between the Mennonites being concerned that the Nazis were there.

But what he brings out in his book is actually these are Mennonite SS Nazi troops that have already quickly taken the love and the hair and become SS soldiers. Here's another picture of another colony. This is also Hauptstadt colony where Heinrich Himmler is visiting and they're having a gathering, a military gathering, probably from that picture you just saw. Here's one, Molotna colony. So you're in a Mennonite colony. It's been there for what, over 100 years.

And you've got the Molotna colony raising a Nazi flag, Heinrich Himmler saluting the Nazi flag. What does this do to you when you see this? I know you're saying, "Dean, you're ridiculous," associating that to the way we're getting involved with politics today. It's totally different, totally things. But please, can you see what happens when you lose the clear way that Jesus Christ has told us to be, to be the church, to be the salt of the earth? You are the salt of the earth.

If the salt loses its flavor, how should it be flavored? How should it be seasoned? It is good for nothing to be thrown out and trampled underfoot of men. Most tragic picture is this next one. This is Johann Claussen talking face to face with Heinrich Himmler. Claussen here was tried at the Nuremberg trials and tried for war crimes for selecting out 100 disabled patients to be killed by the Nazis. It's terrible. Through this, the attack and the prop, they wanted this. They were literally seeking them.

During this, there was lots of propaganda movies and posters and tracks and things that were coming against the Mennonites, trying to win their vote, trying to get them on their side. Here are different propaganda posters specifically, specifically coming and trying to brainwash, if you would, the Mennonites, the German-speaking Mennonites, into accepting their Nazi ideas. You know what it kind of reminds me of when I see those?

It kind of reminds me of this when I was in Lakeshire County and George Bush says, "We really need your help." Let me show you a shocking video, a shocking video. It's in German and it's a bad recording. So I'm going to give you the punchline to the end. At the very end, you're in like a colony, like a community of Mennonites, and they're arguing back and forth of, "Who's my neighbor?" And the preacher is saying, "Love your enemies.

Everyone, the Russians are your neighbor and those who hurt us are your neighbor." And he says, "Well, I don't like this." The challenging, enlightened German is saying, "That's not our faith." And he says, "It's the faith of our forefathers." And then he actually says, "Then I renounce that." Das ist ungerecht, Klaus Nigel. Du musst nicht immer bloß das tun, was dein rasches Blut und dein ungebärlicher Sinn wollen. Deine einzige Richtschnur soll dein Glaube sein.

Dein Glaube und die heilige Schrift, die davon kündet. Liebe deinen Nächsten wie dich selbst. Ja, das steht geschrieben. Aber wer sind meine Nächsten? Deine Frau, meine Verwandten und ihr alle, die ihr mit mir eines Blutes seid, die ihr mit mir eine Sprache sprecht. Ihr seid meine Nächsten. Nein, alle Menschen sind deine Nächsten. Auch die Russen? Ja. Auch die, die uns unsere Pferde gestohlen haben? Die uns berauben? Die unseren Frauen nachstellen? Ja, auch die. Dann ist das nicht der rechte Glaube. Klaus Nigel.

Nein, nein, nein, das ist nicht der rechte Glaube. Das ist nicht mein Glaube. Es ist unser Glaube. Es ist der Glaube unserer Väter. Sage ich mich von diesem Glauben los. Wow. Then I renounce this faith. And that's what they did. It started, this is just something you've got to vote on. You've got to get involved with this. The love and the hair and the politics, they lost their candlestick. Can I appeal to us today to consider this? What about the evangelicals? What about the evangelicals in Germany?

What happened to them? I just wanted to bring some of this up as well because there's other people watching this series than just Anabaptists, I'm sure. So there were some shocking things that happened with the conservative evangelicals as well. There was forming of the Lutherans and the different Bible-believing Christians who were taking this Nazi doctrine and the rules that the state church was giving them and just walking in it. And they just embraced this with the cross and the swastika together.

And I know we look at that today and we said, "Oh, that's terrible." But we think of some of the mixing of messages that we've become just so easily persuaded by today, maybe it'll give you an idea. So here we have the, this is the Luther Day. This is the German Christians, this is evangelical Christians celebrating Luther Day in Berlin in 1933, giving a speech with all these crosses and the swastikas and these things together. And it just became rampant with them as well.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his book and his writings, you see that even in his own little tight group that he had, he had a little community of seminarians, and they were trying to stand against the Germans. And he mentions in his book, in the biography of his book, that he's losing people more and more and more. And here's the Martin Luther Memorial Church in Berlin. And they actually have like on the pulpit and different ways of carvings of Hitler and Nazis of stormtroopers and things like this. Look at this one.

You've got the Sermon on the Mount etched, you know, he's preaching on the mount to the children and a German stormtrooper right along with them. These kinds of things should sober us that when we mix the church with the politics of this world, this is not right. I think that's probably the most shocking thing. And I found out about this reading this Eric Metaxas book, Bonhoeffer, Pastor Martyr, Prophet, Spy, great biography. So this is the Wartburg Castle in Germany.

This is where Martin Luther translated the German Bible. So if you've ever had a German Bible, this is where it was translated. It's like the, you know, it's the main place where German Protestant Reformation was formed. That's where the first Protestant Bible was being translated or language was being translated, the German Bible. And Martin Luther was in prison, basically almost in this place translating it.

But when Germany took Austria, that revival passion was so strong in Germany that even here, that cross was replaced with a swastika. And Bonhoeffer mentions in his diary that there were shining lights and he just couldn't believe of an illuminated Nazi flag over this place of Reformation history. Remember what you're going to say. Times are different now. Times are different now. But the same theology. Have we repented? You've seen this in all these different series.

We've accepted a Constantinian synthesis that has continued as a virus in our systematic theology that must be removed. The same theology, given similar circumstances, will very likely once again create the same result, create the same results. Ideas have consequences. Just real quick, what about the United States and Canada? Someone needs to do some more research on the United States. I'm sure there was more. I have a few slides.

But Canada with the German-speaking Mennonites, here we have the Winnipeg Free Press on January 30th, 1939, showing the Mennonite choir with speakers with swastikas behind them before it was really known. Here again, just having gatherings and Nazi rallies amongst the Mennonites in Winnipeg. I mean, I wonder what people thought when they began to find out what happened afterwards.

In America, we had what's called the German American Bund and large gatherings before it was really before America was early in the war, before America started to pick sides here, was getting involved and coming together to look at Naziism and consider these things as well. And so I ponder these things. I really soberly want us to look at this passage. This isn't a Sermon on the Mount, the beginning of it, relatively early in the beginning. And God came to earth and preached a sermon. And a beautiful sermon it is.

And I have often, so many times, said, "What if Jesus meant every word he said in that sermon?" He said, "You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men." And that's exactly what happens over and over again, over and over again. So in closing, let me just say this. See these types of things that we're seeing as a symptom of a bigger problem.

And again, I realize that most of you did not go to these rallies and most of these things, but I think that all of a lot of you can admit that you're seeing this love and hair affect your church. You're hearing the tones of it coming out in the sermons. You're hearing it afterwards at people's houses. You're seeing it on your Facebook page. And I'm really concerned that this could be the kind of thing that once again in this generation can make you lose your lampstand. I'm asking you to repent.

I'm asking you in the name of Jesus Christ to turn from these things. Again, not just the voting itself. Again, that's just the symptom of a bigger problem. You've missed the bigger thing. The kingdom of heaven is at hand.

We're to pray, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, as earth as it is in heaven." Let's remember the calling that he gave us, that we, the people of God, taking Jesus Christ's cure for humanity, are to be to this world like an embassy of heaven, like an embassy of heaven, that we should show the whole world what the whole world should look like if it would only follow their king, their proper king, that one day from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same, the name of the

Lord will be praised.

And until that day, the church's job is to be what is to become. Let's repent of this political involvement once and for all. Let's reconsider this Constantinian synthesis. Let's stop repeating this Christendom concept. Take Jesus Christ and be the church in this world. Join us in earnestly contending for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.