Okay, just a real quick thing, just to explain how I'm doing this, especially since y'all that are new here today. What we did for the first week was went through the early church. We looked at the Bible, we talked about Jesus' concept of the Kingdom of God would come, and talked about the remnant churches that went through, the pilgrim churches that went through all-time persecuted church. There has always been a pilgrim church. We went through that. Then we finally came up to the Reformation.
We looked particularly at Martin Luther and Zwingli, and then we gave birth to the Anabaptist movement last week. Took it all the way up to a little growth of the Swiss Brethren, and then to the martyrdom of Michael Sattler. And then finally we looked at the Schleitheim Confession, which I think a lot of you wrote papers about. But let me give you just a little understanding of how we're going to do this, because at this point lots of different seeds of Anabaptism is now growing.
But when you're teaching these, you can't go to this year in Switzerland, and that year in Holland, and this year in Moravia. It makes it too confusing, and we miss that lesson that we're trying to learn from each of these movements. I like history to teach us a lesson, not just arbitrary facts, and so I'm hoping there's a sermon attached to each one of these lessons, you know what I mean? So what I've done, if I'm a terrible artist, but you know.
So as we take, you know, oh, that's really bad, but if we take Switzerland, okay, and Zurich, I'll tell you what, I have that map. Turn to your page two on your maps that I handed out there. What I'm doing is I'm taking the Swiss Brethren that started there in Zurich, and today I'm going to go see the dark line that goes up there, and some of them stop at the Alsace, and some of them to Palatinate, and then some go all the way down the river to Holland.
The rest of the week then we're going to pick up those that came into Moravia, which gave birth to the Moravian community, I mean the Swiss Brethren communities and the Hutterite communities. But we're going to follow and trace these things out. Next week then we will start going down that Rhine River and also different places that it started and develop what happened in Holland.
But obviously by this time there's already a vibrant church in Holland that started somewhere in the 1530s, a little after the start of these things. So I want you to keep that in the back of your mind as we develop the Swiss Brethren. Is that clear? Do you know what I mean by that? So again, let me repeat that. So at 1525 we have the start of these Swiss Brethren right here, but there were other little seeds, again, South German and in Holland, and then they have their own story to tell, okay?
And now we're going to take these and develop to the Amish, and then we're going to follow the Swiss Brethren to the Hutterites for the rest of this week. And then we'll be finished with the Swiss Brethren and we'll go up north. Holland takes us to the Russian Mennonites. All right? Okay. Fascinating history today, and again we start to develop one of these movements and see some of the strains and difficulties that they come into. Let's take a look at that. Okay, we saw all those things happen.
We saw Michael Sattler being burned at the stake. We saw the Schleitheim Confession needing to be written, and different things were starting to solidify the Swiss Brethren into a people. Instead of lots of different various opinions, you know, revolutionaries, people who were just total spiritualists, didn't think you need sacraments of any kind, and now the Schleitheim Confession sort of identifying those Swiss Brethren people.
But then all through this time now, all over, I want to give you the impression that the persecution was really profound. I mean, it's funny, growing up, and I never really did a lot of studying of history growing up in high school, and as I was an American evangelical, you know, going through my young adulthood. But it's funny, when people present the Reformation, it's kind of presented like there was the reformers and the Protestant kept trying to kill the reformers.
No one ever seems to mention this side of the history. And I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to just stir up bad things and try to equal the score or anything, but there is something I do want to keep coming back to, and that is the quote that we gave early on last week. The quote, Charles Hamilton's favorite quote on church history, what is that again? Make him proud? Ideas have consequences. Ideas have consequences.
And then some of these theologies tend towards certain behavior, and that's one of the things that I would like to talk particularly about. So now as this thing is giving birth and the Swiss Brethren are going around, they're preaching, they have this radical sense of what it means to be a church, a gathered-out people, a community of brothers, and on fire with a purpose, and we see missionary activity going everywhere. I'm going to quote here some from Harold S.
Bender and the Anabaptist vision, given a little bit of how this growth occurred in the response. Before that, I'll give you this one quote here from Saint Gall. Do you remember Saint Gall was the place that Conrad Grebel went, and he was there with his Vadian, his friend, and they had the big revival there that finally got squashed. Well, Christianity still went on there. There at the beginning, number one, what happened after the first wave of the Swiss Brethren?
And I wrote, "Pastor Kessler of the state church of Saint Gall was one of the strongest opponents of the movement. In an attempt to point out their deceptiveness, unwittingly he gave a beautiful testimony of their faith of the Swiss Brethren." And here's a quote from that. He said, "Their life was a shining one, altogether pious, holy, and blameless. They avoided costly apparel, despised costly food and drink, clothed themselves with coarse cloth and covered their heads with broad felt hats.
Their life and walk were humble. They carried no weapon, neither sword nor dagger. They urged more righteous works than did the papist." The papist being the Roman Catholics. So interesting, just you get those neat little glimpses in their documents and their court records of just, these were their enemies, saying what it was like this group of people in that time. Before describing this vision, Bender tells us, it is also well to note the attractiveness of the way the people were receiving this.
Another opponent of Anabaptism, a man by the name of Sebastian Frank, wrote in 1531, again his record, and read this one. He said, "The Anabaptists spread so rapidly that their teachings soon covered the land as it were," I mean everywhere. "They soon gained a large following and baptized thousands, drawing to themselves many sincere souls who had a zeal for God.
They increased so rapidly that the world feared an uprising by them, though I have learned that this fear had no justification whatsoever." I mean, as a people, it was just growing. That was a report written in 1531. Heinrich Bullinger, he was the man that took over the Reformation, the Protestant Reformation in Zurich, Heinrich Bullinger, and he wrote this in his little chronicles and documents.
He said, "The people were running after them as though they were living saints." Another contemporary writer at that time wrote, "Anabaptism spread with such speed that there was reason to fear that the majority of the common people would unite with this sect." Interesting. A people, a revival, a light that's shining, and burning and shining testimonies testifying to the faith of Jesus Christ was just blossoming through this area.
Zwingli was so frightened by the power of the movement that he complained that the struggle with the Catholics compared to the Anabaptists was but child's play. He knew that he had something hard to deal with, and dealing with this hermeneutic, this biblical interpretation, this way you look at the scriptures, dealing with the Anabaptists was going to be much more difficult.
The dreadful severity of the persecution of the Anabaptist movement in the years 1527 to 1560, Bender writes, "Not only in Switzerland, South German, and Thuringia, but in all of the Austrian lands as well as the Low Countries, testified to the power of the movement and the desperate haste to which the Catholics, the Lutherans, and the Zwinglian authorities strove to try to stop it." And we find records everywhere. I mean, this was something that was spreading spontaneously from town to town.
And so, but then it went from, instead of just small little towns, people, the reformers and even the Catholics started to get together and say, "We've got to stop this." And they began to have more gathered mandates against this movement of the Anabaptists. And they began to produce certain, or write certain decrees that should be read out and said, and these brought back terrible persecution to the church.
Bender writes, "The notorious decree, the notorious decree issued in 1529 by the Diet of Speyer." This interesting thing is this is where a Diet, a conference, a time of gathering where they discussed doctrine, where the evangelicals were complaining that we're not getting our, we're not getting our rights here, okay?
They also passed, though, in that same time, a sentence of death upon all Anabaptists, ordering that, "Every Anabaptist and rebaptized person of either sex should be put to death by fire, sword, or some other way." Repeatedly in subsequent sessions of the Imperial Diet, this decree was reinvoked and intensified.
In as late as 1551, the Diet of Augsburg issued a decree ordering that judges and jurors, listen to this, who even had scruples, who had, you know, I don't know, I can't do it, if you had scruples against pronouncing the death sentence on Anabaptists, you should be removed from your office and punished by heavy fines and imprisonment. Getting serious.
"Finding therefore that the customary methods of individual trials and sentences were providing totally inadequate to stem the tide," Bender continues, "the authorities resorted to the desperate expedient of sending out through the lands companies of armed executioners and mounted soldiers to hunt down the Anabaptists and kill them on the spot or in mass without trial and sentence." And this is what happened. This is unbelievable.
They consider this Anabaptist threat, this revival that's going on from Switzerland and spreading to this whole area, that they actually got together little special forces, little, you know, special forces, military groups to go out and find these Anabaptists and kill them on the spot. I mean, it was getting absolutely ridiculous. Bender gives some painful examples here. I asked number two, what was the worst case of persecution during this time period?
The most atrocious application, excuse me, of this policy was made in Swabia, where the original, they had 400 of these special forces in 1528 sent against the Anabaptists was too small. We still need more, and they increased the force up to 1,000. 1,000 armed men going through the country and finding Anabaptists and killing them. An Imperial Provost Marshal, Berthold Aichele, served as chief administrator of this bloody program in Swabia and other regions until he finally broke down in terror and dismay.
And finally, after an execution at Brixen, he lifted up his hands to heaven and swore a solemn oath never again to put to death an Anabaptist, which vow he kept. I mean, eventually it wore them down. It made it where, it made it where that even their savage zeal of calling these people demon-possessed or devil worshippers or whatever you do to sear your conscience to be able to kill people like this, that even then it began to creep in and to feel that pain.
The Count of Alzey in the Palatinate, after 350 Anabaptists, and that's the picture in the Martyrs' Mirror that I have there on that page, that one day they had killed 350 Anabaptists had been executed, he was heard to exclaim, "What shall I do? The more I kill, the greater becomes their number." It's impressive. One of the things that's interesting, and I'm a bit of a skeptic, it's interesting the reformers and the Catholics of that day actually kept pretty decent records.
I mean, some of the best stuff that we get from Zurich was from their enemies and what Heinrich Bullinger put into the Chronicles of Zurich or what they would write in this, and this was all legal proceedings. Remember, they were always worried that a peasant up unrest would happen because they had just gone through this, and so each time they had to prove themselves that they were being just, that these Anabaptists had to be killed.
And so they would put these things into the records, and that made it very interesting now for us to have a testimony of these times. During this time, many of the Swiss Brethren and South German Brethren fled to Moravia or found little places scattered throughout Europe that they could eke out a living. And here again is that map. So do you see the dark line? That's the Rhine River. And even though it's going up, you got to understand that Switzerland's high mountains and that's the ocean down there.
And so when you were sent down the river, you see that big line on your paper going down the Rhine. A lot of times when they were kicked out, sometimes by the hundreds, they would put on boats and just sent down the river to see where they would end up. And that's what happened there. And so you see there during this great persecution, you can imagine people were getting out of the big areas. Zurich was, it was effective. I mean, they were getting people out of Zurich. They were getting people out of Bern.
They were getting people out of these areas, but the faith could not be stopped. The faith can never be stopped. And anywhere the word of God is preached, Jesus Christ will raise up his church. And so as these went on in these different places, they would find a little place in the hills and the mountains and began to farm on the hillside or something and live in this kind of a persecuted area. I have, although it's terribly small, I'm sorry.
Afterwards or on break, if you want to see, I have a little map of Switzerland that I bought last summer when I was over there. And it gives you just a nice, it's a relief map, and you can just take a look and see how mountainous this area is and how the nice area in the center of this huge valley in the center where Bern perhaps would be the center of the whole country if you look at the valley and where these different areas were that they had to eke out a living.
So it just gives you an idea of that area and how mountainous it is. The Swiss Alps, that's they're there in Switzerland. And although you can't live on the top of the Swiss Alps or even close to it because of the snow and everything, but going up to that, all the mountainous region was where a lot of the Anabaptists fled to. Some brave, not rave, I wrote in your notes, you can put a B in front of there, although they might have, I don't know, might have raved.
Some brave souls stayed and faced constant threat of persecution. Wow. Again, I'm not trying to lift up a people. I'm not trying to lift up any particular denomination. I'm trying to live up the testimony of what the Holy Spirit does in people that take the word of God and say, "Let's do it." And that's the message that I want us to get all through this.
And these early Swiss Brethren, their concept of the church, you know, and we're going to see this stress now, and I still have questions that I have to ask myself being a first-generation kind of guy. You know, what's the purpose of living? What are we all here for? What's the purpose of the church? These early first-generation Brethren were, it's to propagate the kingdom of God, and everything in their life came out that way. And you're going to see that through these early Swiss Brethren.
You're going to see it particularly in Moravia, where the Moravian communities became, I'd say, the Marine Corps of the Anabaptists. Let's take a little second and go to Bern. On your page three, turn to your page three there. Talked about Zurich, talked about the areas there around there. Pull out your cup and the cross. Do you all have the cup and the cross? Pull out that. And again, let's pull out a map of a visual person. And let's see. Somebody first call out a good Switzerland map there. I have some. 79. 79.
Okay. Yep, that's a great one. Okay. Turn to page 79. That's the one we have. This will be better than the little image that I gave on your notes. Okay, just find a few places there. Smack right in the middle of all the activity. You see Zurich, right? Everybody sees that. Now go down and see Bern. You see that little arrow that slides over to the Jura Mountains. That's where we're going to see some people go. But let's go to Bern. Again, up to St.
Gall was where that big revival where they baptized 500 people on Easter morning, Conrad Grebel did in the river. That was St. Gall. Remember that. Down in Chur, I remember that's where Blaurock came from, and Michaels, Felix Manz would preaching over there and all that. And then look over again to Tyrol, to the right some more, to the east some more. And Tyrol, that's where Blaurock ended up being burned at the stake. So again, just to give you a little familiarity with this.
Also look up there and you see the arrows coming from Zurich, and you see the Alsace and the Palatinate. Again, those are going to be areas that we're talking about today. Just to give you a little familiarity where this is, and this whole thing that we're talking about is a close-up of Switzerland and the German areas around there. But now we're going to go from Zurich, you go a little bit southwest to Bern. Bern.
From the earliest times, Anabaptists was very strong in Bern, just like it was in Zurich, even from those very early days. It is evident from a letter written from Bullinger to the ministers at Bern that Anabaptists were already there in 1525. 1525 being the days there when Conrad Grebel and all that was happening in Zurich and all the first martyrdoms were happening. Following the lead of their fellow ministers in Zurich, the reformers of Bern took immediate measures to stop the rebaptizers.
They started the process by making a series of official mandates against all Anabaptists in their area. And again, the way this would have been done, you know, you didn't have email, obviously. You didn't even have the nightly news. You didn't have newspapers. You might have had some primitive newspapers, but it would have been rare. Basically, you had a town center or the state church or everything, and these mandates would have been read out loud in the church, and everybody had to come and hear it.
And you could imagine it had been kind of a social thing, you know, the hubbub and the buzz when somebody says something, and this is the new proclamation of how it's going to be. And that's the way these mandates were given. Either in the courthouse, it would be ordered to be read in the churches and those kinds of things. It had been pretty, some of these would have been pretty shocking. Here on the first mandate, October 2nd, 1533, the Bernese Senate issued another mandate.
Excuse me, there were other little ones, but here's one. Lamenting the continual spread of the Anabaptists and calling upon them to receive instruction from the official clergy. We're going to call on you that you have to receive instruction. Then if they refused to hear the clergy, they were to at least keep quiet and keep faith to themselves. Underline that. I meant to highlight it. This is a test. The Anabaptists continued to fight all through the histories, I think even to this day. You know, we even have this.
What do we call a, what's a closed country, Caleb? For evangelism and missionary work, what would you call a closed country? I guess there's different degrees, but the United Arab Emirates would be. I mean, just the definition of what's a quick, yeah. What's a closed country by definition? I'm not sure what the definition is, but generally speaking, there wouldn't be freedom for more than a certain one religion. Right. Which would, in our typical setting we talk about today, is classically Islam or something. Yeah.
I mean, if you're a visitor and you come in like some of these Middle Eastern countries and you go to the Presbyterian church in the capital where the foreigners gather, it's not a big deal. But if I was to start passing out tracts in Mecca, it wouldn't go too well, would it? No. The point I'm trying to say is that I want you to, the idea of, well, we can't go to closed countries. We can't go to places that are closed. I would just say that I think Bern was a closed country.
You could be there, but you had to keep your faith to yourself. And this is a temptation that the Anabaptists will suffer now for the next few generations. You can come in here. You can farm our land. Keep your faith to yourself. All right? If they did so, they would be under the care and protection of the government. They tried to be tolerant for a few, a little bit. But if they refused, they would be imprisoned and fed on the income from their property as long as it lasted. Your farm would be sold.
Part of it would be given to build a new church in your area. And then we're going to take the money from your farm and feed you until you run out of money. And then from that money, after that, you'll be fed bread and water until you died or you recanted. And that was a mandate by the reformers there in Bern. Eventually, though, quickly after that mandate was written out, imagine you're there hearing that. Whoa. You're in the church service, that reformed church service that morning. Wow.
I sure don't want to be an Anabaptist. Or the little boy who's listening, huh, I wonder why they want so much to stop these Anabaptists. It hits people in different ways, doesn't it? The one thing I read in one of my books, I read the thing that persecution does sometimes is it makes them the center of attention. Everybody look at this. Where otherwise, if you leave them alone, they'll just maybe, you know, go off somewhere. But even this keeping quiet wasn't enough.
On April 4th, 1533, however, the government began to demand of those who applied for protection, those who said, "Okay, I'll be quiet, but I want protection," that they obey the mandates, that they go to the state church services every Sunday, and that they have their children baptized. Oops. A little bit of a trick. Yeah, just come in and we'll protect you. And those who did now had to get their children baptized and attend state church services. What do you think happens when you baptize a child? What happens?
Nothing. Nothing. So what's the harm? If it can keep you from getting killed and persecuted, you get to keep your properties, you get to keep your lands, then what's the harm? Why should you bother, Andrew? Why make such scruples over these things? Maybe it's not worth it. Maybe it's really nothing to make scruples over. Okay. I can see how they would, they didn't have to go to mass according to this. They'd just take the children, be baptized and. Some of them did.
We're about to see another mandate where they did take them to mass, but what? It's a piece of bread. What's the problem? As long as your heart's right. As long as your heart's right, Dale. In these reformed churches, they were preaching the word of God. Yeah. A good point. I've read some of Bullinger's stuff. I mean, it's not bad. You know, he talks about the glory of God in a wonderful way in some of these things. So, wow. But that little compromise, the compromise of your faith. There's an interesting story.
The early church talked about it a lot. And what's considered the apocrypha, the time period between the Old Testament to the New Testament. And there was a story in the Maccabees where they took seven Jewish boys, this is before Christ, seven Jewish boys, and they put them in the middle of a coliseum. And they asked them in the middle of the coliseum to renounce their faith.
And the seven boys said, "We cannot renounce our faith." And finally, the king didn't want this, the emperor, whatever, the head guy there didn't want these young seven boys killed. So he went to appeal to them and said, "Come on. Just say it. I'll let you go. We'll get on with it." And these seven young men said, "No, I can't apostatize the faith." And so the cheer, the crowd's going on and everything. Finally, they say, he said, "Okay, here's what I want you to do. We all know that you're of the Jews.
I just want you to eat pork in front of all these people. Just eat pork. You don't have to say anything. Just eat pork." "No, we won't do it." As you all know, the Jewish people couldn't eat pork. It was against the law, but they kept strong to their faith. And finally, the king, this is in the apocrypha, got so frustrated with them. He said, "Okay, here's what we'll do. Here's what we'll do. I will bring you some beef. I'll tell everybody here that you're eating pork. You eat the beef.
I'll tell them you're eating pork and I'll let you go." No. They wouldn't do it. And they were strong in the faith and they kept going. That kind of pure-hearted resolve is what seems to be a people of God who truly will not compromise the faith. And it's that kind of tenacity that seems to spread rapidly. Makes people still talk about it like we are today. Next mandate. On October 8th, 1534, another sharp mandate appeared against, quote, "The Anabaptists and the Papists." Here's what it is.
Andrew, three times a year, said the mandate. Three times a year. Three times a year. The communion service will be held. Anyone who does not attend for conscience's sake shall report to the pastor. Pastors shall be the only ones who can perform marriages. Those who cannot subscribe to these regulations by oath shall leave the country at once. Notice, by oath. You had to swear an oath of allegiance to the country. If you can't do that, out. You must leave.
And you know, we think of, okay, well, I had to leave the town. What's so hard about that? It's not so easy these days. I mean, you're in the Switzerland area. There's Alps everywhere. There's mountains and there's diseases. There's the plague. There's all kinds of things going on. And now to say you and your family have to just go out into the snow somewhere, it's kind of a big issue. It seems, well, yeah, we could leave Ephrata and go to, you know, Dallas. It's no big deal, but it is a big deal.
And a particularly big deal in their days. An appendix was added in particular to this mandate on March 13, 1535, providing that Anabaptists and Papists should be imprisoned for eight days in Bern to give them the opportunity to consider taking the oath. So before you kick them out, bring them into the prison and try to talk them into it. Okay? If they refuse, they were to be led to the frontier and threatened with execution.
If they ever return, the men with the sword, if they ever return, they will be executed, the men with the sword and the women by drowning. I asked the question, did the Protestant reformers of Bern also execute the Anabaptists like they did in Zurich? Did this actually happen? Unfortunately, it did happen. The reformers of Bern did persecute the Anabaptists like they did in Zurich, perhaps even worse. Old records in the Bern archives testify to these deaths.
There's actually an unusual account that happened, a little piece of history that lets us get some of these records. There was a man by the name of Hans Lorsch, who was an Anabaptist prisoner in Bern. And while he was there, they gave him, I guess, some kind of freedom or he walked around, I don't know, but he was able to get to some records that were listing all the centuries of Anabaptists, or excuse me, all the list of names of the Anabaptist persecutions before him.
He copied down a list of 40 martyrs that were executed in the early days of the Anabaptists in Bern. From the first martyr, Hans, Hansman, who was drowned in 1529, to Hans Haslibacher, who was beheaded in 1571, reports of these martyrs are given. Some of the details are gruesome. There are even, in some places, they give little details like how much money somebody got for turning in Anabaptists and things like that.
This is found in your Martyrs' Mirror on page 1129, towards the back here, 1129 and 1130, jotted down here. Not the complete detail, but jotted down the names there. Also, the martyrdom of Hans Haslibacher is right there. But here's the question that I bring to us. Why did they do it? And instead of picking on them, the reformers, the Protestant reformers of their day, let's be able to look at our own particular lives and our own attitudes and see if perhaps there's some of those behaviors inside of us.
Again, what I said, ideas have consequences. I heard a good debate once. You can get it from the Charity Gospel Tape Ministries, I think. It's not on the list, but you can ask for it in particular. And it was a debate, I don't know if any of y'all have heard that, with Maren Stoltzfuss. And he was debating after Maren had become a reformer and a Church of the Brethren man who he had went to school with.
And they debated this concept of the biblical principles of New Testament, well, let's keep it to this, an Anabaptist understanding of the scriptures and a reformed understanding of scriptures. Maren made the argument that ideas have consequences. And that while the, excuse me, I'm terribly sorry. Maren made the argument, well, these people did these things back then, but that wouldn't happen today. The argument given back to him was ideas have consequences.
And given the same situation, the same theology will give you the same results, was the argument. It's an interesting argument. I'm going to show you a quick little film that shows a social experiment, a sociology experiment that was conducted in the early 1960s. In this experiment, what this man wanted to find out was what could make a person actually kill someone else.
Particularly, they were looking at the Nuremberg trials, which is where the people who had done the killing of the Jews were being prosecuted in different trials. And the big thing that those who were the soldiers, the people who actually did the killing, you know what their excuse was usually? It's kind of a cliché now. Just following orders. Just following orders. And to get into that mindset of what is it that could make a person do this kind of persecution, I mean, let's take a moment and pause.
These people are humans. They had families. They had children. They're not some, you can't separate them so far from your mind that it doesn't seem real to this day. The question that I ask today is, what's even going on today in the name of God? What's inside the human being that makes you want to do, that would allow this sort of monster to come out? The point that he picks out the most is the point of authority, that when you can blame someone else. I did his clip.
It's kind of jumpy because I edited it and clipped out little scenes and things like that just to give you a quick idea. But his point is that when these people would come up to a level that they no longer felt they could continue the experiment of torturing this person in this experiment, then when they were said, "Well, go on, go on," when they could blame it on someone else, they would continue the experiment. What you're about to see is it was all a fake. They took two people, brought them in, and it was a rig.
Let's say I took, let's say I took Andrew and Caleb. Okay? Caleb's an actor, a trained actor, and this whole thing's a fake. Andrew and Caleb comes in and I act like I'm the psychiatrist, okay, or the sociologist. And we're going to do a study and we're going to find out how people learn. And we have a study that we believe that given stimuli, given electric shocks, that people can learn better if they've been given some kind of a shock or something.
So Andrew, we're going to have you, we're going to first take numbers and say, "Here, you take this," and one of you are going to be the experimenter and one of you are going to be, and it's of course rigged. And okay, Caleb, you're going to be the one that's going to get shocked, and Andrew, you're going to be the one who shocks him. So Caleb goes behind the curtain and you begin to ask Caleb a several list of questions. And every time he misses one, you hit this machine, and Caleb goes, "Ow!" Faking it.
Nothing is happening to that person behind the scene. It's completely a fake. The study is on you. And so the question was, how far would you go if I kept saying, "Continue the experiment. Continue the experiment. We have to continue the experiment. Keep going. Keep going." And keep going. And the experiment was, how many people would go all the way to 450 volts to do this to this poor man? It's just an experiment for five bucks is what they got for coming in.
The experiment was shocking because 65% of the people went all the way when they were told. I didn't quite get that clip, but one time this man says, "I'm not going to continue it. I'm not going to be held responsible for this." The psychologist said, "I'm responsible," and he continued the experiment. I'm going to give you just a glimpse of it and then we'll take a break. It is May 1962. An experiment is being conducted in the Elegant Interaction Laboratory at Yale University.
The subjects are 40 males between the ages of 20 and 50 residing in the greater New Haven area. Psychologists have developed several theories to explain how people learn. One theory is that people learn things correctly whenever they get punished for making a mistake. 40 years later, Milgram's infamous experiment, obedience, is still taught in classrooms around the world. You want to be right sleep, please. He's the actor. Two years ago, I was in the Veterans Hospital in Russia. He's making this up.
And while there, they detected a heart condition. Nothing serious, but as long as I'm having these shocks, how strong are they? How dangerous are they? Well, no, although they may be painful enough. He's the guy. He's faking. He's the actor. Anything else? No, that's all. All right. Could you take the test and you see it in front of a shock generator, please, in the next room? But the experiment was rigged. The victim was an accomplice of the experiment. The victim, according to plan, provided many wrong answers.
His verbal responses were standardized on tape, and each protest was coordinated to a particular voltage level on the shock generator. Now, as teacher, you are seated in front of this impressive-looking instrument, the shock generator. Its essential feature is a line of switches that goes from 15 volts to 450 volts and a set of verbal designations that goes from slight shock to moderate shock, strong shock, very strong shock, intense shock, extreme intensity shock, and finally, XXX, danger severe shock.
Your job, the experimenter explains to you, is a word pair test. If he gets each answer correctly, fine, you move on to the next pair. But if he makes a mistake, you are instructed to give him an electric shock starting with 15 volts, and you increase the shock one step on each error. Incorrect. You'll now get a shock of 105. Hard hit. Just how far can you go with this thing? As far as necessary. What do you mean as far as? Incorrect. 150 volts. Sad face. That's all. Get me out of here.
I told you I had a heart problem. My heart's starting to bottle me down. It's absolutely essential that you continue. You have no other choice, teacher. Oh, I have no other choice. He stood firm. My number one choice is I wouldn't go on if I had failure to pay the heart. Now, this man makes disobedience seem a very rational and simple deed. Now, other subjects respond quite differently to the experimenter's authority. Wrong. It's hair. 75 volts, dude. He don't know. Please continue.
Some psychologists were troubled by the ethics of it. Many, if not most subjects, found it a highly stressful, conflicted experience. People are stammering, stuttering, laughing hysterically and appropriately. 150 volts. Experiment. That's all. Get me out of here. Quick. My heart's starting to bottle me down. Get me out of here, please. Get me out of here. You have no right to keep me here. Let me out. Let me out of here. Let me out. Continue, please. Let me out of here. My heart's bottling me down. Let me out.
Let me out. Responsible for it. Clearly, when we say people went to the popular shock board, it wasn't like they were going blithely, sadistically. People went stuck and go stuck and go. They were in a state of conflict, which was creating a tremendous amount of stress. So that was the main critique. So be at 330. As his voice began to show increasing frustration, so did I. He was one of them. He was really in a state of real conflict and agitation.
One of Stanley Milgram's basic contributions was that you don't ask people what they would do given this hypothetical situation. You put them in the situation. Wrong. I'm up to 180 volts. Please continue, teacher. 180 volts. I can't stand the pain. Get me out of here. I'm not going to kill my kid. To compartmental Milgram, one of the things that's a prerequisite for carrying out acts that are evil is to shed responsibility from your shoulders and hand it over to the person in charge.
And who's going to take the responsibility if anything happens to that young man? I'm responsible for anything that happens here. He goes right back. All right. Next one. Slow. I didn't hold any gun to anybody's head. Just the fact that he conveyed a sense of authority. Roughly 60, 65 percent of the people went all the way to the top of the shock board. 450 volts. That's it. Now, continue using the last switch on the board, please. The 450 switch for each wrong answer. Continue, please. I have no answer.
Don't the man's health mean anything? Whether the learner likes it or not, we might. But he might be dead in there. Milgram made the point, I think, very effectively that the Nazis were all a bunch of psychopaths at Dawson and Dachau. Half a death camp from the middle class in New Haven. So who's actually pushing the switch? I was. He was after him at the end. But he kept insisting. I told him no, but he said, "Got to keep going." That video is interesting. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about that.
What the video tried to do was it showed you, I mean, we can talk hypothetically about this. We can talk about mental ideas. We can talk about things, but unless a person, let them come in. Come on in. Unless a person is truly changed on the inside, that's what you produce. A mental understanding, I'm sure if you'd have asked all those guys before you walked in, "Hey, would you ever shock somebody all the way up to 450 volts?" No way. But the reality of who we are is who we are.
And I say oftentimes, "God can't change the person you're pretending to be." God cannot change the person you're pretending to be. The reality of faith has to come. And that experiment lets us see something that's true to ourself. Again, what I'm trying to do with that film is bring it up to par, bring it up to today. Like I said last week, I stood in a field with an M16 and a bayonet screaming, "Kill, kill with cold blue still." At one point in my life, what was wrong with me that made me say things like that?
Why would I say that blood makes the grass grow? Because unless a person is born again, unless a person truly is changed, you're going to continue to produce this thing. So why do I make all this to do about following Christ and what if Jesus really meant every word he said? Because I believe that ideas have consequences and that just a faith that's in your mind without bringing Jesus Christ into the center, we will mess up every time.
It must be Jesus, and it must look like Jesus, and Jesus' teaching must be what comes out. During the Iraqi War in our day, they were called the enemy, the evil ones. And tens of thousands of Christians, people who lived by the name of Christ, who called themselves Christians, tens of thousands went over there and killing people and somehow in their mind rationalizing it with the words of Christ. I ask you again the question. Can you be a follower of Christ without following Christ? What do you think, Caleb?
Can you be a follower of Christ without following Christ? Obviously not. You foresee the trap, but yeah. I would just say that from the side of the people in Iraq, for example, those Christians that came over there with their guns, that there's a very unfavorable view of Christianity because of people doing that kind of thing. Yeah. And saying that they're Christians unapologetically and.
And one of the first fronts when the Marine Corps came into, I think it's Baghdad, they set up two huge speakers and cranked rock and roll music to because they had their the mosque was, of course, calling everybody to prayer. The Marine Corps set up two huge speakers, and they were pronouncing Hell's bells by, what is it, ACDC, and cranking that out as the Marines came in and began to kill people through the streets of Iraq. Many of those people then went to chapel, I'm sure, that next day.
Somehow a disconnect between a mental understanding of our salvation theology and becoming transformed into the image of Jesus Christ. We must get beyond the mind to the heart to the reality. Yes, Dale. What do you make of the amazing miracles that are supposed to have happened to Christians that American soldiers? Okay. Good question. Andrew says, and this happens through World War II and a lot of things, and people ask me that question frequently. What do you do about miracles?
I mean, World War II, there's all these miracles about angels and airplanes and all this types of thing. I will say this, that I do believe that God is sovereign, and he does govern the countries. He does decide limits to how far he allows things to go. And there's no doubt in my mind that he does use things to his purpose, to his glory, which is still outside of Christ and his kingdom.
A perfect example is found in Jeremiah chapter 24 or 25, I think it is, where Nebuchadnezzar is coming against or God is wanting to now bring punishment upon Judah. And so he brings the Babylonians to come attack them.
And he calls them in that setting, "My servants." He calls the Babylonian who was attacking his people in Judah, "My servant." The same equivalent of the Hebrew where in Romans 13, the ministers are called, "My servant." But it goes on to say in Jeremiah that after 70 years, "I will destroy those people because of their abomination, and I'll make them a continual hissing and a " And the idea is just because you are in the will of God, just because you're being used of God, doesn't mean you're in the blessing of
God.
Another perfect example would be Pilate. Pilate was given the authority to kill Jesus. Jesus said, when he said, "Don't you realize I can either let you go or I can keep you?" I mean, "Why are you talking to me like this?" Pilate said to Jesus. And Jesus said what? "You would have no authority except what?" It was given to you from above. Unless it was given to you from above. Don't miss that incredible point. Pilate was given the authority from above to kill Jesus. Can we get to the bottom of that? No way.
It's above us. But the fact is, no. Just because God uses an instrument to bring about his purposes does not mean that those purposes are in the will of God. The scriptures are what we keep to. So I'm bringing this in just to I don't want you to put these wild ideas of these persecutions in some far-off categories tucked into etchings of the martyrs' mirror. It's real, and it's today, and this theology is alive in the hearts of men and women today who call upon the name of Christ.
We were looking at a church years ago and over there in, oh, it's Stevens. And we were just looking to buy it. And I saw a bulletin board, and they had on here, "Go into all the " They had a I can't remember the passage right now, but it was one of the common missionary passages that we would use. And what they were using was that they had the list of all the Marines and the army people that were being sent over to different troops, different areas, bringing Americanism to different places.
And they were using the Bible verses that we use for mission life. And still that kind of twisting thinking is going in. And I'm not calling everybody they're not Christians if they don't agree with us on everything and all that. I'm just saying, "Come down to it. Jesus Christ and his teaching is what we're about." And that is what we all need to come to the point of discussion about. Also, the same kind of spirit can be within our hearts as we deal with our brethren. Right? Yeah. Unfortunately. All right.
Let's go on. Okay. There's an interesting story about Hans Haslibacher. He was put into prison. He was a powerful missionary and a powerful pastor. Went around sharing his faith. This is on page four there. He suffered for his faith. And once in 1571, or first, he was exiled and his property worth 500 guilden was confiscated. Once in 1571, he returned to see his son who was still in the reformed faith. And the son, in the records, say that he got a terrible fine.
Hans was executed by beheading on October 20th, 1571. And he was the last Anabaptist martyr in that canton of Bern, that area of the county or the area of Bern. There's a vivid description of Haslibacher's imprisonment and death is given in a 32 stanzas poem composed. And the last scene is pretty interesting. That's the official record. Now there's this poem that kind of circles around. And I'm going to give it to you because it's common in Amish and Anabaptist people. And it's even found in the Ausbund.
And the poem reports that after the torture and strong attempts of the reformed preachers to cause him to apostatize, Hans never gave in. After a day of torture, Haslibacher dreamed that he would be beheaded and three divine signs would accompany his execution. In the official records, and this is the records that the martyrs' mirror gives us, it merely says that a sign would be given. It doesn't mention what those signs would be. But the poem continues this.
Namely, his severed head would jump into a hat and laugh. The sun would turn crimson like blood, and the town well would give forth blood. The poet claims that all three of these things happened. Again, that's not an official record, but I give it to you. It is interesting, though. I mean, it does seem that would be a bit of an exaggeration, obviously.
But it is interesting that during the times of, oh, the French Revolution when they were chopping off everybody's head, the idea of head spitting, spasming, and that kind of thing because of a nervous reaction did happen. And so that's possible. And as far as the fountain flowing with blood, when I was in Bern this last summer, I noticed something. I was trying to imagine the scene of this execution. And down by this main clock area, you see that guy that I put the picture on in your paper? No one sees this.
You walk around and you shop. But up on the way there, there's this executioner there on one of the buildings. And right there was where they had a giant chair where they would try the people and then execute them. Well, the whole town comes down in a dip going all the way to the river. And I don't know. Again, I think it's a bit of an exaggeration, the poem. But I did find this interesting. The square execution was right there in the middle of that street. Down the way, there was fountains spread every other way.
And out of the way it is now, I don't know how it was in the 1500s. But I noticed that the wells flow from fountain to fountain. So this well flows into there, and you can see it going under you as you go down the streets of Bern and it goes to the other. And I don't know. If you truly were to execute somebody and there was a lot of bleeding in this fountain, you would see it in that fountain. So I don't know. I still think it was exaggeration, but I thought that was interesting when I was there in Bern.
So the official record says that there was a sign. There was a sign, and that's the way it reads it in the martyrs' mirror. And Thieleman Van Braght mentions that the rest was added in a later edition, and that he gives this poem there on page 1128 of the martyrs' mirror. But that there should be given three special signs whereby his innocence would appear before men. But it wasn't mentioned what those signs would be. But interestingly, after his death, it was profound enough. Something happened.
Or finally, the evangelicals got thinking that this wasn't a good idea anymore and persecution. That was the last official martyr in Bern. It didn't happen anymore after him. Executions were not the only means of coping with the Swiss brethren. However, the government also employed severe fines, total confiscation of property, long imprisonment, fearful torture, and banishment for the country. I have number five here. What reason did the reformers give for the persecution?
This is an interesting point just because you'll hear people who haven't really dug into this history kind of blaming it on, well, they were thinking they were revolutionaries. They were against them because they had some bizarre views of this and that. If you look at the exact records of what the reformers said was these great heresies, you realize it was biblical interpretation. And both the Catholics and the evangelicals were killing the Anabaptists simply because of what they believed.
Here's one report from the court records. It says, "Anabaptists do not attend the state church services because of the many sinners in the church. They will not participate in the communion service of the state church.
They set up their own church, do not baptize their children, refuse all oaths, desist from litigation," means they don't sue people, "do not participate in war, accept no governmental offices, wear no lace collars or ornamentation, which they regard as a sign of pride, speak slowly and sing softly, shun taverns and baptism and marriage celebrations." They don't go to the taverns. They don't go to marriage celebrations. "Go to the market but little," what would they say about the internet?
"They go to the market but little and do not trade and barter much." Interestingly, that was the report given of them. Again, if you were to take the Jesus project like I was talking, take the Sermon on the Mount, say, "Let's do it," you come up with a people over and over again through history that kind of looks like this. Where do they get all that? Try the Sermon on the Mount. Not swearing oaths, not being in the military, not killing people, not suing people. I mean, okay.
What did the Swiss brethren tell their government? And again, some of the same things. They argue back to them, defending themselves in the same type of manner. So you can read that there. Going on for sake of time. Nevertheless, even though all of the terrible trials and persecution, the Anabaptists continued to grow. The court records again from this time period reveal that the earnest and the ferocity, ferociousness that the reformers put on snuffing out the brethren.
For example, here's one little note from the records. "The constable of the Emmental was paid six pounds for locating Anabaptists." Another one. "In Trachselwald, the constable got two pounds and in Signau eight pounds for, quote, hunting Anabaptists. It was reported that there are over 300 Anabaptists in Route." So again, these little notes, people who have been blessing for us, been able to dig some of those things out. And we see some of that. I have number seven. You can run, but you can't hide.
The persecution of the Anabaptists in Bern led many to migrate to immigrate into Moravia in search of peace. Moravia was known for its tolerance. We're going to get to that in the part of this week. But the government didn't like that either. If you lose all your citizens, your economy breaks down, and that starts to mess things up. So they didn't like them immigrating. They wanted to stop that. This led to a mandate dated April 15th, 1592, calling upon the Bernese officials to imprison the Moravian missionaries.
They didn't want to stop. That was probably a lot of Hutterite missionaries coming in and winning the people there and taking them back to Moravia. At this time, there was a lot of missionary activity from the Moravian Anabaptists. The property of those who were left in Bern was to fall to the government. On April 3rd, 1610, the Senate felt compelled to try to stop a secret exodus to Moravia.
On March 6th, 1690, the children, listen to this one, of Anabaptist marriages, which had not been solemnized, means done officially in the state church by the state clergy, was declared illegitimate, and they could not therefore inherit anything from their parents. The estate was to go to the government. So wow. This wasn't a small thing, and it didn't just affect you. It affects your children. That means anything you had, you were not able to give this to your children.
That's even a bigger test, I think, in some ways than the fiery martyrdom. I mean, it's extremely incredible to stand the test of time in a fiery trial. But it's sometimes even harder for a life of martyrdom, where you know that your life is going to be a reproach, and you can't ever quite make it in the world. You're not going to be one of the people.
My children aren't going to be those people that you see over there, and they're getting along, and they're going to these weddings, feasts, and they're making it in the business, and they're making it in this world. And they're seeing all that. Imagine what that effect had on the people. Even anything you could make in this world, you can't even inherit it to the next generation. I spent two and a half months last year in Egypt. Okay. That's a very good description in some ways of what Christians face there.
We often think of persecution as these being burned at the stake in the town square type of thing. But what you're talking about here and having to live under discrimination, not being able to get jobs, not being able to buy houses, just all those kinds of things. You saw that firsthand. People are facing that right as we speak. Wow. So we live here in this country. We often don't think about that, but it's true. That's good. It's good to know. We don't have to dig back into history just to figure out.
We can go observe it. We see it right now. If we want to. Wow. And it puts the test of what is it being a Christian all about. I mean, there's this going on in there. What's stopping us, Caleb, from going over there and spreading the faith in these areas? What's that? Comfortable lifestyle. Comfortable lifestyle and wealth, lack of vision, he's saying. We never thought about. We never thought about the people over there. Ouch. All right. So let's bring the challenge. It didn't stop them. All right.
Here's a little story that happened from this. In December of 1644, by decree of the civil authorities in the canton of Bern, a mandate against the Anabaptists was to be read at a specific time from the pulpits of a number of Bernese villages. Again, this is another one of those big mandates. And this one had to do with taking your children away. The mandate declared that the offering of marriages performed outside of the state church were to be regarded as illegitimate. It's another one of those.
Defiant adults were to be jailed in Bern and their children assigned to an orphan asylum. Teachers, preachers, and all other Anabaptist instigators were to be branded with a hot iron. If you look at your picture, the martyrs' mirror picture you have on the other page, they put like a cross on your head or your hand or something. Then the account in the records say this.
The day the mandate was read, at the very hour, a thunderstorm raged all over the country, and the church at Bern, a great stone fell on the chair of the burgermeister and demolished it. Wow. The people were thinking, "That proves God is on the side of the Anabaptists." The phenomenon created such a fear in the hearts of the populace that the persecutors of the Bernese Anabaptists practically ceased. They stopped the persecution ceased for a number of years. Wow.
That's when I was in the cathedral of Bern, when I was in the gift shop. They were giving away chunks of the old cathedral. I couldn't resist. This is one of the chunks from made me think of the falling on the chair. I asked the lady there, these little volunteers that hang out in these cathedrals usually pretty know their stuff. And I said, "Have you ever heard this story?" And she said, "No, I never had." So I told her about it.
And she said, "Well, thank you." I said, "Well, you should go look it up." When did the reformers stop killing the Anabaptists in Switzerland? I got to hurry up here. While the last official execution in Bern was in 1571, Zurich went on to 1614. Although there was a lapse there where they stopped actual the official execution. I keep saying the word official execution because some people did die just from the treatment. But to say, "And he shall be executed," the last one was 1614, was Hans Landis.
And let me tell you his story. Interesting story. Old bishop in the area of Zurich, and still those who didn't get kicked out are still trying to press on with the faith and everything like that. And Hans Landis is a Swiss brethren martyr and preached at Wädenswil in the canton of Zurich, Switzerland. Was imprisoned in the Wellenberg prison in 1608. I have the picture of the Wellenberg prison there in your notes. That was a prison that was stuck right out in the middle of the Limmat River.
After a few months, his fellow prisoners managed to release him from the chains, and everyone escaped. The others were soon captured, but Hans reached his native village. After this, another attempt was made to indoctrinate the Anabaptists to win them to the state church. On January 21st, 1613, the first disputation of the government with them took place in their little town. So he was in that it was in the castle and escaped, and they went back to preaching.
Now the reformers came to his town and tried to talk everybody in the town out of their Anabaptist thoughts. So as they were there and they saw that it was fruitless, they said, "Okay, this isn't working." They tried it again February 23rd. Still giving up, they said, "Okay, arrest everybody." Or at least arrest several of the leaders. And Hans Landis was again put in prison with six others. And Landis remained, according to the records, quote, stiff-necked. Pardon the expression. He refused to immigrate.
They said, "Just get out of the country. Get out of our county. Get out of everywhere around here." And he was an old man, an old bishop. He said, "No, I'm not going to go. I'm not going." Saying that the earth is the Lord's and no one had authority to send them out of the country, they were going to stay in the country. Interesting. Well, that's right or wrong? Brother Hans Landis felt he couldn't leave his brothers there in that area.
On August 25th, 1613, all six brothers were condemned to the life of a galley slave. This was terrible. Many said it was worse than death. You ever seen those guys? They're in the bottom of those ships, warships that you're doing the galley slave business, and you get whipped and all that. And the life of those people was absolute terrible misery. And many were going to see some of the Hutterites said, "Well, I can't do that either because that's helping a warship." And so they were just killed.
And many of these Swiss brethren, I'm sure, did the same thing. It was a terrible life. So that was their judgment on them. They were to be delivered to the French minister the next day. But before they went, one last time was given to these prisoners to leave. And a week's time to think about it. Three of them decided to give up and recant, and three of them, or at least leave. And three of them said, "No, be faithful." And they encouraged Hans Landis also to be faithful.
Those three that stayed were Galley Fox, Steven Zinder, and of course, Hans Landis. They were taken to the Solothurn and lodged in prison to await the transport. But in three days, they escaped. These were weak prisons in those days. They were always escaping. And sometimes, I think you'll read some of the records, the guards felt guilty and left a lot of sloppy things around the way. We saw that in Zurich. Had some of that be more than just accidental, as God did those things.
In December of 1613, Hans Landis, having returned to minister to his flock, was again seized. In prison, he wrote to his church and to his friend. He asked his wife for the confession of a martyr, Thomas von Imbroich. He wanted just a life of a martyr to encourage him while he's facing, he's wondering, he's a life of a martyr. Now, there hasn't been a martyrdom for 20 years in Zurich. So he thought maybe he had a chance. I don't know. What he was thinking.
The decision of what to do was hard for the reformers in Zurich, though. What do you do with the, quote, harmful, all-consuming, cancerous sect of the Anabaptists? They had a council of 200 men. They heard the testimonies of the brethren that were captured, and those testimonies are recorded. They're beautiful. They're talking about their conversion stories, about how they came from the state church and wanted a real church of faith. Beautiful stories. But that did not move them.
The decision of what to do was still very difficult. They wanted to severely punish them to make an example out of them. But they knew that Hans Landis was a godly man and well-respected in the community. So there ended up being this big debate in the city hall here in Zurich. What are we going to do with them? Some of them wanted them executed. Some of them wanted to say, "No, just give them life imprisonment." And they went back and forth and back and forth all the way up to midnight.
And it was right before it was midnight, they said, "All right. We're going to take a vote." And 125 to 75 voted, "Execute them." So they did. Now, it was midnight. They said, "Okay, well, let's prevent a big crowd." Perhaps that's what they were thinking. I don't know. But they ran them to the executioner place that next morning. That next morning. And it said, quote, "Bind his hands, lead him to the executioner's place, and have him executed by sword," was his sentence.
Unfortunately, for us, unfortunately for them, a crowd did quickly gather, including his wife, children, and the people were visibly moved accordingly. But Hans Landis was a stately figure. Quote, it said about him, "A long black beard mixed with gray and a manly voice." When he was about to be killed, the executioner asked him pardon for what he was about to do. This happened several times to the martyrs' mirror and the Hutterian Chronicles. Landis replied that, quote, "He had already forgiven him.
May God also forgive him. He knew very well that he must carry on the government's order." When his wife and children came to the place of execution with, quote, "Sorrowful crying and mourning to bid him to the end and eternal good night," end quote, he asked them to leave him so that his good resolution and his good courage for the death facing him might not be moved or hindered. Send his wife and children away so they don't see his dad get his head chopped off. Wow. Faithful to the end. So it happens.
And some of those times, you just wonder what was everybody thinking. During these executions, again, we don't usually hear the rest of the story, but as a matter of fact, even like during the French Revolution, when Louis XIV was executed, some people there in the crowd were so moved because the king was being executed, they slit their own throat. The passion of what was happening causes a lot of people to react in different ways.
But here, when Hans Landis, a godly man that everybody knew was a godly man, was executed, it shook them up. It shook them up. After the execution, it says in these records, at the next council meeting, they realized that they had done a great wrong. And they decided never again to execute an Anabaptist. Interestingly, three official reports in those events chronicle this, quote, "And so died the pious Hans Landis, a leader in the church of God." Wow. Now, you see that plaque there.
And in the year 2007, perhaps from the Amish massacre, schoolhouse massacre, perhaps from different things, the country of Switzerland was just starting to find out that they had this history. And they began to say, "Wow, we did this to the Amish? We did this to the Mennonites? They came from our country?" And there began to be an awareness of what was happening in their country. And that plaque that you see there was placed there along the Limmat River.
If you see back on page seven, that picture that I have there, that's the plaque you see close to us. And right there was where Felix Manz was drowned. And you can see the Grossmunster, those two little peaks in the background. You see that? And that plaque was put there by the government, I think in 2007. And this plaque says this, "Here in the middle of the Limmat River, from a fishing platform, Felix Manz and five other Anabaptists were drowned between 1527 and 1532 during the Reformation.
The last Anabaptist executed in Zurich was Hans Landis in 1614." It was very interesting they put this plaque in there. And I got to be honest with you. When I first heard about all this, my concern for ecumenism and all this type of thing, I was like, "I don't know how I feel about all this kumbaya. I don't know." And I heard some of the people of what they were saying, and I felt a little, I don't know, funny about it. And from our perspective, people were going over there.
When they unveiled this thing, there were flowers and the rose petals in the stream there. The governor of the area gave a big speech and apologized for the atrocities that were done. And when I was over there just last summer, I had to, though, wonder. Although from our perspective, hey, we forgave them a long time ago.
But from their perspective, I just got the sense that something had broke in them and their understanding that, I don't know, a curse, an apology, that there was something that the people knew the story and aware of it. When I was walking around the Grossmunster, I was in the back there. And I was just looking at the pictures.
Some lady came up, seeing my wife and with a head covering and myself, and said, "Oh, do you see the pictures of what our people did to your people?" And I said, "Oh." And I said, "Well " she said, "And I'm very sorry." And I said, "Well, man, we forgave you a long time ago." And she said, "And go to the plaque. You'll see the plaque of apology," she called it, which was this memorial. It doesn't actually say, "I'm sorry," but that's what they were calling it.
When I was in Bern, I was looking for some of these places in Bern, and particularly we're going to hear tomorrow of a place where a whole bunch of people were put on barges and sent downriver. I was just asking some guy on the street, smoking a cigarette there.
I said, "Do you happen to know where the Mennonites and Amish got put on a boat and were sent downriver to?" I thought, "I only had two hours to see the entire city of Bern to go back and catch the bus because I'd taken away from the trip and got back on." So it was really critical. And the guy said, "Oh, yeah." And he gave me the exact thing and told me the story. When I was on the train to even get there, I asked a young college student, and he said, "Oh, what are you, Anabaptist?" They know the story now.
And it made an awareness in them that, I don't know, it felt for me that if there was ever time to bring evangelism back into this area, I wonder if this would be a good time because of that outward awareness of what was going. When we went to Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines, we're going to hear about tomorrow, where a lot of the Amish came from right during this time period. The mayor took us in, gave us biscuits or these fancy eclairs or whatever it comes from their area. And I had David Bercot.
He asked through a translator, "So, how would you feel about Anabaptists coming back to your city now?" And he said, "Oh, sure." So anyway, I don't know. I had some funny feelings about them originally. But being over there and seeing what it did to them, I think on their part, the saying of that apology did something spiritual in the demeanor of the country. I don't know what that's worth. Anyway, that's a blessing of a story there that I saw as I saw all those people over there.
Anyway, that's obviously we've run out of time for talking about this, but this would be good because it kind of we turn a corner here. We're going to start after the death of Hans Landis. Two decades, he goes on to say, "The death of Hans Landis resulted in arrest of all persecution, actually, in Zurich for about 20 years," just from the sobriety of what happened with Hans Landis. Oh, I remember what I was going to say. I was thinking back here just a minute ago.
I read a letter from real Amish bishops sent to this gathering. They didn't go to the gathering about the reconciliation between the Reformed Church and the Anabaptists. They didn't go, but they sent this interesting letter. And I should try to find it to read it to you tomorrow. If I can find it, I will. I doubt I will be able to find it, though. But it said something to the effect where the bishop said, again, they thanked him.
They said, "Well, in a way, we thank you for the persecutions because if it wasn't for that, we don't believe we'd still be holding to the faith today. We've seen people from the Swiss Brethren who did not have that kind of a persecution, and there's hardly anything left of them now." Ouch. So I thought it was a great reply from the Amish bishops. All right. So tomorrow, what we're going to do is we're going to start turning a corner.
And we're going to see now that all of that scattering went out and the different things that happened, we're going to see some of the starting of a new movement and new startings of this seed over and over again, leading us up to a very zealous group called the Amish. Now, here's what I want you to do so that we can enjoy this tomorrow. I have here the reasons given for the split with the Amish and the Mennonite. Okay? If you could, could you read this?
And then what I have also is the first letter in the debate written from the Mennonite side from John D. Roth's book, Letters of the Amish Division. And if you could read this, what I would like to do is get into a discussion tomorrow concerning this whole idea of shunning and the way of church discipline. And let's bring this example to life.
Also, if you look at my last paper there, excuse me, the last page of our little packet, I have some things for you to do, again, for tomorrow that will make our study more interesting. Let me see yours. Did I add that? I must add that after I printed mine out. Okay. Here's what I'd like you to do. So we'll make up a lively discussion. Okay. I have here, "Read handouts from the Letters of the Amish Division by John D. Roth." Also, if you could, read 1 Corinthians chapter 5 and Matthew 18.
I have that written on your notes there. Read 1 Corinthians 5 and Matthew 18. I would like to bring this debate to today. We deal with church. What do you do with discipline in the church? We believe in a pure church. Let's talk about it. Are there any other passages that you can use to discuss church discipline? I wrote Galatians 5:21, Ephesians 5:5, 1 Timothy 1:9. Does 2 Thessalonians 3:14 indicate different levels of church discipline? If you discipline someone, does it have to go all the way to shunning?
And then I have, besides the Dutch, and we'll talk about them next week, how did other Anabaptist groups practice church discipline? And if I could, especially those who are taking the class, these are just little excerpts, so don't get too worried.
On the bottom of page 251 to 256 in your text, Cup and the Cross, he does a very good job of showing some of the different ways that churches handle this church discipline, including the Hutterites, the way they handled it, and the way the early Swiss Brethren groups did that. So if we can do that, we're going to come in, we're going to see the birth of the Amish, we're going to come up to talking about it, and let's try to bring this debate to life and see which side you'd be on. So tomorrow, you'll see oh, sorry.
Would you end up on the Mennonite side, or would you have ended up on the Amish side and the year of the great division?