Separation from the World: Lessons from Early Anabaptists

Well, good morning, everyone. It's good to be here. It's been a while since I fellowshipped with you, and I don't think that my wife has ever been here in this building with this congregation.

David asked me a while ago if I would come and share on something about early Anabaptism because, as you know, this is the 500th anniversary of the Believers' Baptism in Zurich on January 21, 1525. So I agreed to do that. So this isn't necessarily going to be what I prefer to do on a Sunday morning, which is to work through a biblical text and explain it and apply to it. But I think we'll do some of that also today, too. Now, I'm going to just kind of make a couple of caveats about some terms and so on. This term Anabaptism, I really don't like it.

I really don't like it. In fact, I have stopped referring to myself as an Anabaptist. Now, I can't get away from the term completely because it has such currency today. In fact, people will say, "Well, you know I'm an Anabaptist," and so on. Well, Anabaptist literally means rebaptizer, a person who's been baptized a second time. And it's a term that these believers who practiced Believers' Baptism were given as a nickname, as a derogatory nickname that was given to them by the detractors. And it was not only a derogatory term, it was a capital offense to be rebaptized, a law that goes all the way back to the Justinian Code in the Roman Empire once it became part of Christendom.

So it's a problematic term in my mind. In fact, as you read through the sources of these early believers in the 16th century, when they were asked, "Are you an Anabaptist? Are you a Wiederkäufer?" And they would say, "No, we're not.

We're not." So we go around using this term that they say they're not. It's one of the ironies of history and so on. But now, if we didn't have English, if we weren't working with English, we would have some alternatives.

If we were German, we could say Käufer, which simply means Baptist. But we all don't want to use Baptist because that refers to something else here in America, which we may not entirely want to be connected with.

But there's another term in German called Teufgesinnen, which means baptism-minded or baptism-inclined. The Dutch form of that is doopgesinde, means the same kind of thing. But you know, saying baptism-minded is sort of an awkward kind of phrase. It hasn't really caught on. But if you read The Martyrs' Mirror, if you look at the title of The Martyrs' Mirror, the term it uses there in the Dutch is doopgesinde, which is baptism-minded. And there were two marks by which Van Brael, when he was looking for martyrs through the century, was looking for: did they baptize upon confession of faith, were they Believers' Baptism, and were they defenseless, were they non-resistant? Those were the two criteria he was looking at.

Okay? The other thing, I have participated in quite a number of events this year on this commemoration of 500 and so on. I'm almost the evented out. I guess I will go on Friday, the Kingdom Fellowship weekend, to hear what those folks have to say.

But oftentimes, the event is focusing on the first Believers' Baptism there in Zurich in 1521 and the aftermath and how that worked. But one of the things I think has been largely, not entirely, but has largely been ignored or glided over or omitted from these whole commemorations, I guess sometimes celebrations and so on, is an early Swiss Brethren article of faith on separation.

Okay? Now, the term Swiss Brethren is actually a term that goes back to those believers in Switzerland in the 1500s. It's a term that sometimes they were able to use about themselves. It was a term that people like the Hutterites and so on would use to kind of distinguish themselves from this particular group of things, even though the Hutterites were very much influenced by the Swiss Brethren in some of their thinkings. And in many ways, particularly with their understanding of baptism and Lord's Supper and the ban and all that kind of stuff, they were very much in sync with. They differed on how to apply or how to work out the whole idea of community of goods.

So all these early believers in the 16th century did believe in community of goods. They just didn't parse it out the same kind of way. The problem with the Hutterites is that they put a copyright on the term, and that's what everybody has assumed that they're that's what you mean. All right, separation, a Swiss Brethren article of faith.

First Believers' Baptism in Zurich on January 21, 1525. If you look there on the illustration, you'll see the large church-like building. That is the Grossmunster. That's the big church in Zurich. That's where Oryx Wingley preached. That is kind of the center of the Reformation in Zurich. That's kind of the powerhouse where a lot of stuff happened. But if you go just a little bit above that and over a little bit, you'll see a short street there up in kind of the right-hand corner.

All right. That's the house where Felix Munz's mother, Anna, lived. And she lived in that house because it was a house for

essentially the concubines of priests because the priests weren't supposed to be married. But it was a very common practice in Switzerland as well in other parts of the Europe for priests to actually have they sometimes called them a wife. They weren't actually officially married or so on, but they functioned sort of as a wife. And so here in Zurich, they actually had a house for these women, and that's where their children were and everything. And of course, it's really nice and handy next to the Grossmunster where the priests were all working from. In fact, Oryx Wingley, he had the term concubine is kind of an ugly term, but that's sort of a thing. He actually had a relationship with a woman before he actually married her.

And it just was a common accepted practice. In fact, the Bishop of Constance, who was the bishop over Zurich and so on, he just simply taxed the clergy if they did that. They had to pay a fine. It was kind of a way of bringing revenue. And I guess it's sort of like speeding. You know, if you do it, you're going to have to pay a fine.

But why this is important is because on January 21, 1525, this group of young men and probably women, Anna Munz was probably there. Okay? People like George Blauroch, Conrad Grebbel, Felix Munz, and so on, Andreas Casaberg. Over the last year or so, they had been discussing with Wingley, with the Zurich Council, their conviction about the fact that one should be baptized as a believer.

All right? And of course, there was resistance to that. And in fact, just days before this, there was a disputation or a debate between these young men and Wingley before the Council. And the upshot of that was the Council had told them that you need to leave it go. Okay? In fact, some of these young men who had children, like Conrad Grebbel, they had not had their babies baptized, and they were ordered to have their babies baptized.

And so what are they going to do? Well, it's obvious that the Reformation in Zurich is not going the way they think it should be going. So what are they going to do? All right? Well, this account, which is taken from the Hutterite Chronicle, describes this event on January 21, 1525. One day, when they were meeting, fear came over them and struck their hearts. After prayer, George Blauroch stood up and asked Conrad Grebbel, in the name of God, to baptize him with true Christian baptism on his faith and recognition of the truth. With this request, he knelt down, and Conrad baptized him. And then the others turned to George in their turn, asking him to baptize them, which he did.

And so, in great fear of God, together they surrendered themselves to the Lord. They confirmed one another for the service of the gospel and began to teach the faith and to keep it. This was the beginning of separation from the world and its evil ways.

Okay? So the Hutterite Chronicle, the compiler Hutterite Chronicle, looking back over probably actually some decades after the event, and they promptly got this account from George Blauroch, who after this had gone into Tyrol and had done evangelized before he was caught and executed in 1529. And of course, Tyrol is the area where the Hutterites, Jacob Hutter and so on, came from. So this story was probably passed down through those little groups of believers there in Tyrol until it was finally recorded in the Chronicle.

But the thing I want you to notice here is this was the beginning of separation from the world and its evil ways. All right? That's the perspective looking back. What did this signify? Yes, it did signify the restoration of Believers' Baptism, but it also signified the creation of a new community of believers who, by their lives and by their expressions and so on, refused to go along with the patterns of the world, refused to let the world put them in its mold, but instead sought to pattern themselves after the example and teachings of Jesus and the apostles.

Now, one of the things we have to keep in mind is this bottle of water down here for me? Okay, good. Thank you.

One of the things that we have to keep in mind is that unlike Lutheranism, unlike Zwingli and later Calvinism and others so on, that I guess I'm going to use it, Anabaptism was not a centralized movement. It was always from the very beginning, grassroots, okay? Grassroots and decentralized until, of course, the Hutterites come around and they do a lot of centralizing. But they're kind of an anomaly, at least early on. But there's a lot the thing is grassroots. And also, people are reading their Bibles for the first time. 1522, Luther translated the Bible from Greek into New Testament. It was published numerous times. 1524, Zwingli and them came out with a version of that. And over the next several years, Zwingli and a cohort of translators translated the whole Bible until it came out finally.

The final part of it came out in 1529. All right? So people are reading the Bible for the first time. And I think that many of us can hardly imagine what that's like. If those of you have been brought up in Christian homes where the Bible was read regularly, you went to church and you heard the Bible and so on, it doesn't have that impact that it would have if you never heard it before, if you never read it before.

I remember when I became a Christian at the age of 15, and I grew up in a fairly nominal family as far as church going. We went to church some and so on, but I didn't really read my Bible that much. But I remember when I became a Christian, I had Mennonite friends, and that's how I got introduced to the gospel and so on and started attending Mennonite church. I started reading the Bible. I just gobbled it up. I just read and read and read and read and read and read and read and read and red. It was all new to me.

It was all new to me. And now, I'm not sure it was quite as new as it would have been for these folks, but it's all new to me. So these people are reading their Bible, but they also have things from their own background that are forming how they read the Bible. They also have other influences that are coming in. Some of the stuff they come up with is a little silly. There are stories told about how some of the people in St. Gallen took the teaching that you're supposed to become like little children, that they acted like little children. They literally pretended that they were little children, physically little children.

Some of that stuff, I don't know quite if that's true because it's something that their detractors said. And you know I've always told people, you know, you maybe ought not to believe every bad rumor about somebody that goes down the pipe because it may not be true. But you know when something gets written down in the 16th century, you know, well, even scholars will say, "Oh, well, I guess that's what they did." Well, you don't know that. That may have been just some scuttlebutt that somebody came up with and accused them of saying and so on. But anyhow, there were some of those kind of things. The point I'm trying to make is that it was not a tightly organized movement, and there was variety, and people were bringing things into it.

And there are different expressions of this so-called Anabaptism. And some of the believers were somewhat disturbed by some of the developments that were happening, some of the things that some people who were claiming to be believers and so on were advocating and advancing and so on, and perhaps even ignoring. And so on February 24, 1527, a group of these Swiss Brethren leaders gathered together at Schleidheim, which is in southern Germany, kind of just a little bit north of Switzerland and so on. And there they drew up these seven articles of brotherly agreement. Okay?

Let me see if I can get the title. Oh, here, I can look at it. The Brotherly Agreement, this is the title page of the first printing of it, the Brotherly Agreement of Some Children of God in Seven Articles.

And that's the official agreement. Sometimes people refer to it as the Schleidheim Confession, which is, again, I think sort of a misnomer because it's not really a confession of faith. It's more of a church order dealing with seven different points. There is a lot of theology in this, and as you read it, you can see some of their theological commitments and understandings and so on. But it's not a full-fledged confession of faith, for example, like Dortrek or something like that.

Okay? But in the cover letter to the Schleidheim articles, and the person that it's believed was responsible for drawing up these articles was a man by the name of Michael Satner, a man who had been a former Catholic monk, a prior of a monastery who had left the monastery in 1525, bounced around in radical circles. He was in Zurich in November 1525. But the scholars who have worked on his life the most have kind of come to the conclusion that he really wasn't baptized as a believer himself until probably the summer of 1526. Okay? But by February 1527, he is at this meeting of Swiss Brethren leaders, and he's an important leader because he's the person who actually draws it up.

In fact, there's a letter written in the 1550s reporting on another gathering of Swiss Brethren leaders in which the person refers to the fact there was a brother there who had been at Schleidheim when Michael Satner was there and referred to the fact that these seven articles were drawn up by Michael Satner. So that's a pretty good testimony that he's kind of the person behind it. But you think about that. May 1526 is probably May or June of 1526 might be about the time he was baptized as a believer. By February, he's a leader. Well, one of the things you have to keep in mind, we're dealing with very short spaces of time here. January 1525 coming up to February 1527, that's just a little bit more than two years later.

And a lot of new leaders are coming onto the scene, and some of them are reading the scriptures for the first time. Michael Satner wasn't. He wasn't. Because one of the advantages that he had as a monk in a Benedictine monastery in the Black Forest, where he was a prior, which meant he was right under the abbot, who was the top guy in the monastery, was in the Benedictine tradition, there was a strong emphasis on scripture reading and studying.

So he had been probably most of his monastic life been reading scripture. And you know, last week in Sunday School at Shippensburg, we had that passage about the scribes who come into the kingdom of God. They're like persons bringing out of their treasure house treasures, both new and old. And so you have people like my and Menno Simons was the same way. He had been reading the scriptures for probably 10 years, trying to figure things out, coming to conclusions until he was finally willing to make that break with the Roman Catholic Church and be baptized as a believer. But very soon, because of all that reading of scripture and studying and working through it and so on, he was very soon able to come to a place of leadership and also impacted the believers very much through his writings.

And so Michael Satner is the same kind of person here. All right? So they're gathering together, dear brothers and sisters, we who have been assembled in the Lord at Schleidheim on the Rad and make known in points and articles to all who love God that it's concerned us we are of one mind to abide in the Lord as God's obedient children, his sons and daughters who have been and shall be separated from the world. So right there in the preface to this thing, they're talking about the need to be separated from the world in everything and completely at peace. And of course, they're talking there about completely at peace with God. But also, this is a brotherly agreement in which they're coming together and they want to be in agreement and at peace with each other and have a common expression of what it means to be Christ's disciples here in this world.

And of course, the seven articles are baptism, the Lord's Supper, the ban, the calling of pastors, the separation from the world, the sword, and the oath. I think I got them all seven there. I may have not gotten exactly in order, but I think those are the seven.

But we're going to focus on this one article on separation. The reason for the gathering at Schleidheim, a very great offense has been introduced by certain false brethren among us, so that some have turned aside from the faith and in the way they intend to practice and observe the freedom of the Spirit and of Christ. But the civiousness and self-indulgence of the flesh, they think faith and love may do and permit everything and nothing will harm them nor condemn them since they are believers. Now, does that sound like anything we are faced with today? There is, as Solomon says, nothing new under the sun.

One of the things, you know, I'm a historian, and one of the things I notice is I don't believe that history is cyclical in the sense that it, as the Greeks taught, is sort of a cycle that goes around and around. But there are patterns that you look at how people respond to what was happening, there are parallels, and there are certainly parallels today. How many people have you known who have been liberated, have experienced Christ, and so on, but they run with the liberty? They run with the liberty, and they're resistant to accountability. They're resistant to any kind of order, both in their lives and in their communities and so on, because they're making this claim of freedom in the Spirit and so on.

Well, I had the same thing happening in the 1520s. All right? And so that's one of the reasons these folks are getting together, because what they've noticed is that this kind of attitude has led to the civiousness and self-indulgence of the flesh. And that's really what they want to tackle here. They want to have a church community in which the civiousness and self-indulgence of the flesh is not going to be part and parcel of their experience. Okay? They want to be separated from the evil that's in the world. That's the reason for a gathering.

By the way, these images here are pages from that 1527 printing of the Schleidheim article, and they're the pages on the article on separation. But this is actually taken from the preface. To observe you who are God's members in Christ, that faith in the heavenly Father through Jesus Christ does not take such form. It does not produce and result in such things as these false brethren and sisters do and teach. Guard yourselves and be warned of such people, for they do not serve our Father, but their father, the devil. But you are not that way, for they that are Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and its lust. You understand me well and know the brethren whom we mean.

Separate yourself from them, for they are perverted. Petition the Lord that you may have knowledge which leads to repentance and pray for us that we may have constancy to preserve in the way which we have espoused for the honor of God and of Christ, his son. Amen. And so basically, what they're saying here at Schleidheim is that we really cannot participate and make common cause with people who are making an occasion for the flesh, who say, "Oh, it does not matter how you live. What matters is your heart," or, "What matters is whether maybe you've even been baptized as a believer." That's really what matters. So these folks are saying, "No, no. What matters is that we have crucified that Christ has that they are Christ who have crucified the flesh with its passions and lust."

That's the kind of community these folks believe God is calling them to. And I think they were right. Now.

All right. Okay. Before Schleidheim, before they met at Schleidheim, Michael Satner had been in the city of Strasbourg for a little while, not very long, maybe several weeks and so on. While he was there, he interacted with the two Protestant reformers in Strasbourg, Wolfgang Capito and Martin Bucer. Now, Strasbourg, at this particular point, there was about a five-year period in which Capito and Bucer had not exactly decided what direction their reformation was going to take. And so there was kind of a liminal space there where things were kind of everybody was coming to Strasbourg because basically it was one of the safest places to be, because Capito and Bucer were not coming down with a hammer.

I mean, Zwingli had started executing them. If believers were caught in any Catholic area, they certainly were captured and executed, often in very nasty kind of ways. But Capito and Bucer interacted with Michael Satner. And at some particular point, probably toward the end of 1526, he writes this letter to them.

And this letter, the actual letter that Michael Satner wrote with his signature is still around. It's in the archives at the University of Basel's library. Okay? And this is a picture of the first page of it. It's a really nice picture, isn't it? But you can read an English translation of it in Andrew St. Marie's book on Michael Satner.

But most of them, not all, but most of the points of this letter have to do with the idea of separation from the world. And one of the things I want you to notice here as we look at these things, what is Michael Satner basically saying? He's basically saying there are two kingdoms. There's the kingdom of God, the kingdom of Christ, and there's the kingdom of this world, the kingdom of the devil. And you have to decide these two kingdoms are opposed to each other, and you have to decide which one you want to become part of, because they have two different characteristics, two different origins, and two different destinies.

Okay? First point, Christ came to save all those who would believe in him alone. He who believes and is baptized will be saved, for he who does not and he who does not believe 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. Now, one of the things I'm not going to go on with this for a long time, but just one of the things I do want to notice here is that the early Anabaptists did believe that water baptism was symbolic, but they did not believe it was only symbolic. They believed that the rite of water baptism did incorporate you into the body of Christ. Okay? And that's an important thing to keep in mind. All right?

Christ is the head of his body, of the believers or the congregation. As the head is minded, so must its members also be. The foreknown and called believers shall be conformed to the image of Christ. Christ is despised in the world, so also are those who are his. He has no kingdom in the world, but that which is of the world is against his kingdom. Believers are chosen out of the world, therefore the world hates them.

The devil is the prince over the whole world in whom all the children of darkness rule. Christ is the prince of the Spirit in whom all who walk in the light live. The devil seeks to destroy, Christ seeks to save. The flesh is against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh. Those who are spiritual are Christ. Those who are carnal belong to death and the wrath of God.

So do you see the stark comparison that Satner is making there between the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of this world? Okay? And the different characters that they have. One of the things I find interesting is number 10. The devil is the prince over the whole world in whom all the children of darkness rule.

Okay? You know, Paul says that we have been translated from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his dear of the Father's dear Son. Okay? And I think one of the things that we when I think about that, you know, when you think about what Jesus did on the cross, and you know, this was something that, you know, I was taught actually from the very beginning of my entry before my baptism and after my baptism at the age of 17, is that Jesus paid the price of our sin. He redeemed us from the power of darkness. He translated us out of that kingdom into the kingdom of his dear Son.

That's good enough atonement for me. Okay? That's good enough atonement for me. That's Exeter. All right. Christians are fully yielded and have placed their trust in their Father in heaven without any outward or worldly arms. The citizenship of the Christians is in heaven and not on earth. Christians are members of the house of God and fellow citizens of the saints and not of the world, but they are true Christians who practice indeed the teachings of Christ. Flesh and blood, pomp and temporal, earthly honor and world cannot comprehend the kingdom of Christ. In some, there is nothing in common between Christ and Bilau.

And by the way, that is Martin Bucer, one of the reformers there. Okay? That he was writing this letter to. All right. So what is the key text for this whole idea of separation from the world? What's the key text? Well, it might not surprise you. It's 2 Corinthians, chapter 6. This particular translation is taken from the Concordance and Untzaier, which is a collection of Bible text arranged by topics and starts off with, you know, about God and runs through a whole there's like 30 some topics or more. And one of the topics is separation. And one of the key texts in the section under separation is 2 Corinthians 6. And by the way, these concord when we think of concordance, we think of like Strong's exhaustive concordance where every verse is listed, every word, so on.

This is more like I don't know how many of you have ever had a topical Bible. Okay? This is more like a topical Bible, but it's actually a small book that could easily be put in your Bible. And the other thing to keep in mind is that books were expensive. Even New Testaments, even though more books were being published and printed than ever before, they're still expensive.

New Testaments were more plentiful than the whole Bible. Not everybody would have had one. But what's nice about these is that they had these Bible verses printed out under these topics. And so people could use these. These were created by Swiss Brethren and reprinted many times. The first one, they think, was printed around 1540. The title page I have here is from a later edition printed in 1565.

But one of the things that's so interesting is that when the reformers and the Catholics and so on were debating these believers, they were astounded by their biblical knowledge. And how did they so quickly get this biblical knowledge? Or how could they so quickly like if they were debating baptism, how could they're just pulling the verses out and so on. Well, these concordances have these verses, and they read them, and they study them, and they memorize them, and so they're able to debate. But the key text when it comes to separation is 2 Corinthians 16. And this translation is of the text that occurs in this concordance. So it reads a little bit differently than what maybe our Bibles does, but not that differently.

And it is based on the text that was used in these concordances is the first shirt text, which was the translation that the Swiss Brethren really preferred. Do not put on a foreign yoke with unbelievers. For what does godliness have in common with ungodliness? What does light have in common with darkness? How does Christ agree with Bilau? Or what part does faith have with unbelief? And what similarity does the temple of God have with idols? For you are the temple of the living God, as God says, "I will join among you and walk among them and be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore, go out from their midst and separate yourselves," says the Lord, "and touch nothing unclean.

Then I will receive you and be your Father to you, and you shall be my sons and daughters," says the Lord Almighty. Of course, that's a quote that part's a quotation from the Old Testament. All right? So that's the key text. Okay? That's the key text that we can reference back to 2 Corinthians 6. All right?

The call to be separated from the evil that's in the world. Okay? So here's the article on the Schleidheim article on separation.

We are agreed as follows on separation. A separation shall be made from the evil and from the wickedness which the devil planted in the world. In this manner, simply that we shall not have fellowship with them, the wicked, and not run with them in the multitude of their abominations. This is the way it is. Since all who do not walk in the obedience of faith and have not united themselves with God so that they wish to do his will are a great abomination before God, for it is not possible for anything to grow or issue from them except abominable things. Now, that is pretty stark language, isn't it?

One of the things I'm struck by Schleidheim and other early Anabaptist writings, particularly when we're talking here about the whole idea of separation, the difference between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world, is they give the devil his due.

They give the devil his due. They think he's dangerous, and they think they should have absolutely nothing to do with him. And they see all the evil and wickedness in the world as being part of his kingdom and being part of what his project is. And his project is to subvert God's project. And we can't have anything to do with the devil's project.

Okay? He's a dangerous person.

There are but two classes. For truly, all creatures are in him are in but two classes: good and bad, believing and unbelieving, darkness and light, the world and those who have come out of the world, God's temple and idols, Christ and Bilau, and none can have part with the other. To us, then, the command of the Lord is clear, what he calls us when he calls us to be separate from the evil. And thus, he will be our God, and we shall be his sons and daughters. He further admonishes us to withdraw from Babylon and the earthly Egypt that we may not be partakers of the pain and suffering which the Lord will bring upon them.

Now, one of the things I should just mention is that they're not talking here about physical separation. They're not talking about, "Okay, let's get into a little enclave all by ourselves," and so on. They're talking about a separation of how we live and to whose allegiance we belong. That's what they're talking about. Okay? Because they lived in their villages, they lived in their towns, and so on. They had neighbors who were not believers and so on.

Right? So they weren't leaving physically the world, but they were saying there is there's this thing called the world, which is characterized by the devil's plan, the devil's agenda. Okay? And most people are involved in that plan and that agenda, but Christ is calling us out of that to live a separate godly life that reflects his teaching and his commandments, and we're to do it together.

Now, one of the things that Schleidheim goes on to say is, "From all this, we should learn that everything which is not united with our God in Christ cannot be other than an abomination, which we should shun and flee from. By this, it meant all popish and anti-popish works and church services, meetings, and church attendance." Now, the illustration up there that I have is a cartoon from the 16th century. It's actually an anti-Catholic cartoon. Okay? Because here on the one side, you have Luther, and on the other side, you have the Roman Catholics. Luther is there in the pulpit preaching the word of God. He's exalting the lamb of God, which takes away the sins of the world.

Over here, we have the baptism of infants. Then we have receiving the Lord's supper in two kinds in both kinds because the Catholic Church at that point was not giving the cup to the laity. And then you have these people down there just soaking up Luther's teaching. I mean, they're the people in the community, the people in the village, the people in the town. It's everybody.

Okay? And Luther said that the church is where the word is rightly preached and the sacraments are rightly administered. And so he didn't really define it in any way as far as the kind of life that people had to live or how they had to conduct themselves or anything like that. Just that those two things happened. And of course, when he talked about rightly preached, it meant his particular take on the whole thing. All right?

And of course, on the other side, you have Roman Catholicism, preaching of indulgences. You have the pope up there. You have intercession of the saints and the whole sacramental system and so on. And of course, this is an anti-Catholic polemical cartoon, and they're doing the Catholic part is portrayed in a negative kind of way.

But Schleidheim says, "We don't want we should not participate in popish," that's Catholic, "or anti-popish or repopish," sometimes it can be translated as, which is referring to the Protestants, to Luther and Zwingli and so on. All right? Their churches service, their meetings, and church attendance. In fact, there's an interesting later writing about separation.

The title of it is "Concerning Separation: Why We Do Not Attend Preaching at the Papal, Lutheran, and Zwinglian Churches." And I find it very interesting the reasons why they're saying we shouldn't go to the I mean, they didn't think we should walk inside of them.

Okay? I find it interesting now that Mennonite singing groups like to go to some fancy cathedral or big high church sort of thing to do their programs and recordings in. I've heard the excuse that it has something to do with the acoustics. I don't know about that one. I'm not entirely buying that one, but it sort of worries me a little, troubles me a little bit.

But why were these folks saying, "We shouldn't go. We should not attend preaching at the Papal, Lutheran, and Zwinglian churches"? Okay? Why be so categorical? Well, interestingly, the first point that they make is they do not follow 1 Corinthians 14 in their churches. Do you remember what 1 Corinthians 14 says? It has to do with how you conduct worship. Paul says that people are if the Spirit gives somebody something to utter, they're supposed to be able to say that. They're supposed to take their turns. And, you know, each person is bringing to it the whole thing. So they're not unlike Zwingli, who is like the official preacher. He's the guy who tells everybody what God is saying.

He's interpreting the Bible. He's the official learned preacher. Okay? The Anabaptist idea was more getting together in a group, reading the scriptures together. And then an early congregational order says, "And he who has the best understanding should explain it," but each one taking their turn. And that is a direct takeover from 1 Corinthians 14. And so one of the criticisms that this Swiss Brethren writing has is that, yeah, the Protestants, they don't have priests, but they have clergymen. They have official professional leaders who it's they're the only guys who get to preach. They're the only guys who get to teach. They're the only guys that have any input. And everybody else has to kind of passively sit back there and take it.

Okay? So that's why we don't go there. They coerce people in matters of faith and conscience. Okay? They're using force. Okay? If you don't agree with us, we're going to put you in prison. We're going to punish you. We're going to exile you, and we're even going to kill you. All right?

They want the worldly sword to rule on the gospel. And again, one of the things interesting about the Protestant churches, the Luther and Zwingli, is that they're really depending on the state, on the state the civil governments, to decide what how the Reformation is going to be enacted, how it's going to play itself out, how it's going to be instituted. And these early believers say, "Well, you're letting those men rule on whether or not you're going to follow the gospel." And of course, that's the first that's the original critique of that small group there in Zurich in 1525.

Their actions testified to the lack of the Holy Spirit. And one of the things I do want to just mention about this is that among all among all of these folks, whether you're Swiss Brethren, whether you're Hutterite, whether you're Duftsgesinde or Mennonite up in the Netherlands and so on, they had a very strong understanding, a very robust understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit in the believer's life, in the community's life, in directing and teaching and empowering.

It's a very, very healthy thing. Okay? And then the ban is not used in their churches, so the supper is not truly kept. Again, these are state churches. Everybody who's lives in the territory baptizes infants. They're part of the church and so on.

You know, if they're in Catholic church, you do have the whole sacramental system. It gets people ready to take the Lord's supper and so on. But for the most part, there are people living wicked lives. And it's not a matter of the church so much to deal with it. The church deals with heresy. I mean, the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant Church have dealt with what they called heresy, but they really didn't punish bad behavior with the ban or anything. They didn't put them out. Okay? They left that up to the civil government. The ban is not used in their churches, and so the supper is not truly kept.

They don't follow Christ's order to first teach and then baptize. They abolish the cross of Christ by not living uprightly. So this is why these folks are saying, "We can't go to the Roman Catholic churches, to the Lutheran churches, to the Zwinglian churches and so on. We can't go to them because of these things. We have to be separate from them."

And then we have what I would just call garden variety, wickedness, and fleshliness. Okay? "We should shun and flee from drinking houses, civics affairs, the commitments made in unbelief, and other things of the kind which are highly regarded by the world, and yet are carried on in flat contradiction to the command of God in accordance with all the unrighteousness which is in the world. From all these things, we shall be separated and have no part with them, for they are nothing but an abomination, and they are the cause of our being hated before our Christ, who has set us free from the slavery of the flesh and fitted us for the service of God through the Spirit whom he has given to us."

One of the things that's interesting is there's this story told about this one man who was in a tavern. And of course, taverns were just, you know, come their ends and stuff like that, and alcohol was served and so on.

And the early Anabaptists did drink beer and wine in moderation. I'm not supporting that. I'm just making a historical observation. All right? But the one thing they were dead set against was drunkenness. They were dead set against it. And drunkenness was a big problem in Europe.

It was a big problem. And it really wasn't that frowned upon. There's this one incident in which a man who's in a tavern, and he wasn't drinking, or maybe he wasn't drinking to excess, and they know the rest of his friends, the rest of the people around him noted they didn't know the man and so on, and they suspected that he was an Anabaptist because he wasn't drinking. Well, he wasn't an Anabaptist, but they expected that. And there's another account about a Hutterite, an early Hutterite, who was caught, who he and his companion were in an inn, and the inn owner noticed that they were not drinking.

And he suspected that they were Anabaptists, and he called in the authorities, where in this case, they were. But their clue that he had was that they were not drinking. They were not getting drunk. Okay? And so that's what Schleim has said. We don't have anything to do with that kind of carousing, that kind of wickedness and so on. It's an abomination. And I think the thing that you have to kind of get the that grip you is how seriously they thought sin was, how big of a deal it was. They did not gloss over this kind of stuff. It's an abomination.

All right? Now, the final thing, okay, the final thing that this article on separation talks about is non-resistance. "Thereby shall also follow away from us the diabolical weapons of violence." Again, you hear that language there. How seriously do they take the devil?

Weapons of violence come from the devil. "The diabolical weapons of violence, such as sword, armor, and the like, and all of their use to protect friends or against enemies by virtue of the word of Christ, you shall not resist evil." Now, Michael Sattler himself had an encounter had was confronted with this on May 18th, 1527. Just months, just a few months after Schleidheim, he was captured in April of 1527, was held in prison for quite a number of weeks before his trial. His wife was also captured. A bunch of other people were captured. But he was tried on May 18th, 1527.

And one of the accusations that they brought against him, he said, he has said, "If the Turk were to come into the land, one should not resist him. And if it were right to wage war, he would rather go to war against the Christians than against the Turks, which is, after all, a great offense to take the side of the greatest enemy of our holy faith against us." Now, this is 1527. The previous year in 1526, the Ottoman Turks, who were expanding their empire, okay, 1453, they had taken over Constantinople and renamed it Istanbul. They were working themselves up through the Balkans, and they were in 1526, they fought the King of Hungary at a battle called Mahocus, and they defeated that army.

The King was killed, and all Europe thought, "They're coming. They're coming for us." Okay? Vienna wasn't that far away, which was the capital of the Holy Roman Empire. Okay? And of course, the Archdukes of Austria were the were the was the emperor.