So let's get into the birth of the Moravian Anabaptists. In the 1520s, we saw a lively spread of Anabaptism through Tyrol, Austria, and all these different places, and the persecution was pretty severe. If you look at your maps, again, you can pull out your map from Cup and the Cross, and in fact, it'd probably be a good thing to do, page 79 or something.
So if you have Germany, you know, up here, you have—we've been in Switzerland up here—way over here to the east is the Tyrol area, part of what would have been a big Austrian area of the time, the Tyrol. And in this area, you still get a lot of persecution, but there's also a lot of missionary activity, a lot of growth. It's over in this area that George Blaurock was burned at the stake. This would have been a Catholic.
In general, Catholics burned you at the stake; the Protestants were nice and just drowned you or cut your head off. But that's—you can see a general difference. If you see a martyr burned at the stake, it's usually a Catholic, so it gives you an idea. So in the Tyrol, George Blaurock brought the—you know, he was one of the missionaries there, and different people came to the Tyrol area.
I do want to make a correction: it was Peter Walpot who became one of the big organizers of Hutterian missions and one of the leaders who was an eight-year-old boy watching George Blaurock burned at the stake, and he later becomes one of the main Hutterite leaders. Make a correction: I said that wrong a few days earlier. So there's one account I put in here. One source says in 1530 that there were thousands of executions out in this area, and the stakes were burning all along the Inn Valley.
So again, looking at this valley here. Caleb, if I could borrow that. So here we are, looking at all that. And so pick up this map here that says the Hutterite Bruderhofs, and look at this area here, and you're going to see Moravia and Austria. So that's far east; Switzerland would be over here to the west. And so now we're starting to head to that area. Stakes were burning all along the Inn Valley. Yet a number of the Anabaptists continued to grow.
Soon the news became known that Moravia, and in particular the manorial lords of Nikolsburg, the lords of Liechtenstein, was a haven for all sectarians, not just Anabaptists. There's one quote I heard that one of these Catholics was going from town to town and all the different sects and different people that were there, and finally he said he gave it up and went back to the Catholic Church. And a lot of people came to Moravia, not just the Anabaptists, but the Anabaptists came by the thousands.
They came by the thousands. Here, Hubmaier could freely write and print his new ideas concerning adult baptism. In fact, one of the Liechtensteins himself accepted baptism upon faith. So when you remember—let me give you a review of Hubmaier. Do you remember Hubmaier? He was there in Zurich. He was one of the originals there. He met the Anabaptists in his little town of Waldshut and had a little revival there. He ended up in Zurich, but if you remember, he recanted.
And he's the guy who Zwingli was so happy that he recanted because he's a doctor of theology, so he dragged him into the different churches, and he was about to have him give the speech that, "All right, tell everybody how you recanted," and Zwingli was going on about how terrible it was, and he just couldn't take it anymore. And finally he said, "I can't, I can't recant," and he told the story. Then he started to preach from the pulpit against infant baptism. That was Hubmaier.
But you remember they took him back to prison, they racked him, tortured him, and finally he compromised again and recanted again. So now he's kind of trying to find his way in life and starts to find out about this great place way over in Moravia. So look at your first map there that again—and he goes to Moravia, and particularly he goes to Nikolsburg. Nikolsburg. So now we're in the Moravian area. Like I said, there were lots of groups there.
In particular to Moravia, you had a sense of some form of community living that seemed to be going on there. This was expressed differently in the Hutterites than it was in some of the other groups. You have something that's called like this. There's different ways you can express yourself and the way you share your possessions and things like this. And there'd be the idea of the community of goods.
There would be the—and this would be, of course, you have a pot that you put all your, you know, your things, and particularly if there's people that are needing help with this or that, they can have help to that community of goods. There's the community of production, which takes this a step further, and this is where we see the Hutterites taking this a step further.
A lot of the Swiss Brethren, even there in Zollikon, seem to have practiced some sort of community of goods, as we saw that in the first statement there, that they had some form of a burden that they needed to do these things. Also, Harold S. Bender has one in the middle that he says still exists to the day. He thinks very nicely, and I agree with him that I think it's a mark—I've said this many times already—is the community of charity.
And I think this is a particularly good thing in all of the Anabaptist churches. It's something that I've found coming into this world that I'm very blessed with.
And so to some extent, I will say this, to some extent, however you work that out in your mind, this is a New Testament, I believe, a Jesus thing, and that so you should be able to express this in some way, at the very least, community of charity, that a brotherhood should be able to come together and help people if they're going through hard times or their sicknesses or something like that. I think to lose that is to lose something major.
What we're going to see today and with the Moravian Anabaptists, obviously, is taking this to a community of goods, and then, of course, the Hutterites being taking that the furthest into a community of production. Any thoughts on that real quick? You know what I mean by that?
So there's different ways you can look at this, but the whole idea that I've seen with the charitable attitude of the Anabaptists is I am blessed with, and I hope that we can continue to do that no matter how we express these teachings of Christ. Okay. So there in the even the Hutterian Chronicles mentions that in this area there were already some of these Swiss Brethren communities. The Phillipites and the Gabrielites were there already in Moravia as well, even before the Hutterites began to come out in that area.
Some of these had some interesting stories themselves. I don't want to go into a lot of detail, but some of the Phillipites, even they had trouble. They both came in and out of the Hutterites at different times. Most of all got absorbed into the Hutterites, but the Phillipites, even some of their songs are in the Ausbund, some of their songs that they went through during their times of persecution and trials and testing there.
There were also other groups in this area who were even a little further and different than this, and they were communities that were based around the teachings with Pilgrim Marpeck, and there would have been Swiss Brethren type of Pilgrim Marpeck fellowships and communities around here, and they would also obviously have a very strong view of a community of charity. But it was actually in some of these writings between them and the Hutterites that the whole name Swiss Brethren was coined.
It appears first in the Hutterian Chronicles when they were saying, "What do you call those guys?" And even though they weren't from Switzerland, a lot of them, they were from South Germany, they were called the Swiss Brethren, and that's where we get that idea of difference of people there. All right. So let's get to Nikolsburg. So Hubmaier leaving Zurich, you know, he's feeling kind of probably humiliated, embarrassed. He's a brilliant man. He had this following, and now what do you do?
So he finds out there's a chance to go to Nikolsburg, and he meets up with the count there, and he starts—excuse me—the lords there, and he starts being able to talk to them about the faith, and they're excited about it. So I'm going to put Nikolsburg here. After that recantation and the humiliations, Hubmaier heads to Nikolsburg. Bottom of page two, I'm coming on there. Early in July of 1526, he arrives in Nikolsburg, which through his influence became for the time the center of the Anabaptist movement.
I want to—you can't miss this. At this time, about 12,000 Anabaptists poured into Moravia, into Nikolsburg. Let me give you an idea. The population of Zurich in that time was about 5,000, the entire population. And so already, but you can just—I mean, what a testimony to the missionary zeal, the revivals that were going on, is that by this time, 12,000 Anabaptists were pouring into this area. As you can imagine, the place was stressed. That was, "What are you going to do?
How do you deal with this?" You got to work out a lot of different things, and I'm sure they had a lot of issues that didn't even quite make the Chronicles or anything else. So in 1526, Hubmaier came there. All right, he said that. This Moravian town became to the Anabaptists from all the main center, from all the South German, they gathered and spread their teachings all over Southern Moravia. Here they found the soil was well preserved.
These same 12,000 then began to share their faith in different places, and it was growing and growing in Austria and these different places. Many people started to come. Remember Froschauer? Anybody remember Froschauer? Froschauer was that guy in Zurich who was eating the sausage in the printing press. Well, he was one who started printing Anabaptist tracts.
He printed the Swiss Bible, the Froschauer Bible, and he followed them there and ended up bringing his entire printing press from Zurich into Moravia and started setting up there, and he basically was great for Hubmaier because he started just printing everything that he had for him and started to stay there with him. So it's growing. Things are getting excited, and now so some of the radicals start showing up. One of our favorites, right? Hans Hutt. Hutt, Hutt. Starts showing up. You remember Hans Hutt.
He was the guy who had—he was pretty serious about the whole Jesus is coming back thing, and he was a little too far with the whole thing, but he was also a zealous missionary. We remember him. He was one of the main players there at the Martyr Synod, if you recall. But some of these kind of extreme thoughts mixed with a very moderate Hubmaier didn't go well, and they started to have some conflicts. They started to have some conflicts.
As they began to—as they began to go and to have different conflicts with things, they began to have some oppositions. Now, let me plant a stage here of what's happening. Let me jump over—well, turn over to page six real quick, and I'm going to set the stage now instead of at page six. I want to give you a glimpse of what's happening in the world at this time because we can sometimes isolate it from world history. But here, the progress of the Islamic invasion onto Europe was getting extremely serious.
And if you were ever a place when this was happening, Moravia and Austria would have been the worst place to be. So when the Hutterites, when the Moravian Anabaptists chose to go east from Switzerland, they were going from the frying pan into the fire because here now they're being confronted not only by the Catholics and Protestants that are persecuting the Moravian Anabaptists, but the entire Ottoman Empire is coming to its highest point where it wants to take over Western Europe, and it was getting very serious.
The progress—you see I have that paragraph, second paragraph there on page six. The progress of the empire was explosive. In 1453, the Sultan Muhammad II conquered Constantinople and renamed it Istanbul, putting an end to the Roman Empire. The Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent conquered modern Yugoslavia in 1521. That's not far from here, okay? And he proclaimed a jihad against Austria and against the Western people.
He was more of an imperialist, but nevertheless, of course, just like Charles V and the rest of the Catholic guys, you have to bathe it in religious overtones as well. He proclaimed a jihad against Europe and against Austria in particular and began to come further and further.
In 1529, in 1529, remember we're just setting now in 1527 in Nikolsburg, in 1529, the entire thousands and thousands of troops come and march on Vienna and totally surround them, and if it wasn't for God's intervention and terrible floods and floods of rain and terrible conditions of weather and winter, they finally just gave up and went back home.
But that gives you the stage of what this area of Europe looked like when all these 12,000 Anabaptists were there, and it lets you understand a little bit of Ferdinand I and all the struggles they're having with all their issues of what do you do with all these world conditions. It was an intense time to live in Europe. All right. Back to page three.
So with all these threats, Ferdinand and the different lords, Catholic lords, were saying, "Okay, we have to have the citizens ready all the time." So they made them walk around with swords all the time ready. They had like little swords, daggers in their belts, and Hubmaier began to defend the sword. He began to go on the side of this and began to become more and more thinking that he could make this Anabaptism and a state church work in Nikolsburg.
And you remember him, even way back at Waldshut, he helped the peasant rebellion, and he helped them even make their documents, and he even seemed to have defended them when the troops came against Waldshut, against the Catholic troops. Unfortunately for him, I believe that was Ferdinand. And so later on here now, he went through all that time with, you know, Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz, and the Swiss Brethren and all that, but now he's pretty much the main guy here. Everybody's listening to what he has to say.
But not everybody agreed with him, of course. Hans Hutt started saying, "This is ridiculous. He doesn't agree with this." Not to mention, I could just imagine after reading him, his idea of ushering in the kingdom of God and not trying to mix it with the kingdom of the world would simply not mesh with Hubmaier's idea of a state church Anabaptism. So they started to have some problems, and first they started to have disputations.
If you're an Anabaptist and you're in the 1500s and somebody's planning a disputation, it's a bad day. And so it was a bad day for him. They started having disputations. They started talking about things. Hans Hutt started to make some arguments towards a community of goods, probably more of a Swiss Brethren style community of goods than a Hutterite style, and then he started to also make arguments, strong arguments against the use of the sword. They had a second disputation. He was thrown in prison.
The Chronicles say that a friend of his let him out through a rope, and he was able to get out of the window, and he escaped. And finally, after all that, Hutt says, "I'm out of here," and he leaves Nikolsburg, and that's when later on we pick him up at the Martyr Synod and having a role there in spreading missionary zeal to the South Germans there in Germany and also into Switzerland. So that's that first phase of what the—of all these things that happened there in Nikolsburg.
So the disputation between Hubmaier and Hutt. It would have been the state—okay, so now the lords of Liechtenstein are there, and they're already converted. So one of them is getting baptized already, and he's trying—these lords are trying to make this—they're buying Hubmaier's documents, are trying to turn this into this will be the state religion of their province.
And so just like it would have been Lutheranism with Luther and Catholicism, if it would have worked, this would have been an Anabaptist state church, so to speak, so under Hubmaier's concept. And again, you see this same type of thing with the unity of the Brethren. Again, remember how you had the Czech Brethrens, Peter Chelčický and those type of guys who had an original Jesus-following faith, which then eventually eroded into the state church.
The unity of the Brethren became practically a state church in those Moravian areas long before this. That's another quick thing. A lot of these lords and a lot of these rich landowners would have been generations past.
They would have not been quite Lutheran, not quite Catholic, but still hold on to some of those remnant ideas, at least in their histories or in their memories and their souls of the back days of Huss and the Peter Chelčický, and that was the spirit of what they were all from, which would have been the lords in their area. So when they let the Anabaptists stay on their land, some of them probably had a conscience about the whole idea that they wanted to help brothers like this. Okay. I'm sorry.
So was Hubmaier influential in getting Hutt put into prison? It doesn't say that. Just at the disputation, he's put into prison. I don't—I'm sure he was. I mean, they were fighting back and forth, and it was because of his suggestions. I mean, he was pretty much the Luther of his area here, but it didn't say that specifically, so. I think for your parents, that he was tortured twice in Zurich and then. Good point. And then does that.
It kind of goes back to that parable of Jesus where he forgave the servant a little one thing, and then—I mean, the big—he forgave the king forgave the man, the great debt, and then he wrung the neck of the one who owed him just a little debt. Yeah. Good point, Lucas.
So as they go into this, and he now starts to produce a big work that became famous in that area, Hubmaier wrote the work on the sword, and it was specifically against the Schleitheim Confession, specifically against the Swiss Brethren, proving—trying to prove that these Anabaptists just don't understand that you got to be in the state and in the church, and that it's a—you got to find the balance there, that war is right when it's ran by the state and try to make the same kind of Lutheran arguments.
But there was another thing that was happening. Right when he was writing that—I'm a terrible artist, but—King Ferdinand. King Ferdinand started to get very nervous about these Anabaptists growing. He was a diehard Catholic, and King Ferdinand said, "I want Hans Hutt arrested," and they also arrested Hubmaier. Now, bad news for Hubmaier because way back in Waldshut, when he was back there as a very starting of his Anabaptists, it was Ferdinand that he went against to win that little city.
Now he's being brought into charges. Not as charges as an Anabaptist, not as charges as a heretic, but charges as a traitor against the state, an insurrectionist, and that's why he was arrested. It made it more difficult that he was arrested under those charges because at that time in the area, because of the protection of the different general lords in that area, you couldn't persecute somebody for heresy like you could a little bit later. So but he was charged now under these purposes. All right.
And after he signed the forward to his book, Hubmaier, four weeks after that date on the sword, he was in prison. He who lives by the sword dies by the sword. And the very thing that he was defending, he now finds himself in prison. You get the impression reading him that he thinks he's going to pull it off. He gets thrown in prison, and he begins to complain about different things. He complains he doesn't have enough books.
He complains about the conditions, and he begins to write things to show his support—to show his support to the king. Steven Sprugel, who was a contemporary eyewitness, wrote an account, reports that Hubmaier enjoyed numerous visits of learned men of good repute, who with good intentions and sympathy urged him to renounce his errors. Hubmaier himself bemoaned his strict confinement. Illness and other difficulties had come upon him, and he suffered from his want of books.
During the conversation, he defended himself, and he said, "What I have hitherto taught and written, I have not taught for the purpose of secular privileges for myself, but because I—as I think God's spirit seized me." They began to have these colloquiums, where they brought in different things, and the Catholics were questioning him about all kinds of different things.
He then began to write several documents to the king and trying to show how supportive he is, that he's not a traitor, he's not an insurrectionist, but he's a very supportive person, but they would take his writings and look for the slightest little thing that was wrong and said, "Look what he said here," and they exposed that, and they charged him, and so they said that he was going to have to be executed. And fortunately, he did not recant. Fortunately, he did not recant.
Sprugel said that the same person, the eyewitness there, his wife even encouraged him, and this man said of her, "She's even further in his faith than her husband." She had even a stronger faith than her husband.
So when he was taken to the scaffolds, accompanied by a great crowd of people and following by an armed company, he raised his voice and cried out in the Swiss dialect, "Oh my gracious God, grant me grace in my great suffering." Turning to the people, he asked pardon if he had offended anyone and pardoned his enemies.
When the wood was already in flames, so the wood was starting to burn him, and he cried out, "Oh heavenly Father, oh my gracious God," and when his hair was being burned and his beard, the last thing he said was, "Oh Jesus," and he choked on the smoke and he died. So ends the life of Hubmaier.
Interesting, the Chronicles relates—I think some historians like to contest this—but the Chronicles relates that a few days later, when he was in prison, he began to make things right with Hans Hutt and said even if he was here now, I would be with him. We would be together. A few days later, his wife was thrown over a bridge into the river Danube with a stone tied around her neck and drowned. So they would have considered that a nice way to kill somebody, you know, just drowning.
And so that was an interesting concept there. Okay. So now what do you do? Well, back when they were starting to make that—back when they were trying to start to make some of that differences there—back when they were making those differences, another person came by the name of Jacob Wiedemann. Let me find my place here. One-eyed Jacob Wiedemann. We don't know why he has one eye. I guess maybe, I don't know, lost it in some battle or something. Who knows?
But it was one-eyed Jacob Wiedemann who also came here to Nikolsburg. And he began to have problems there with these discussions about the sword, and his people started to gather together in little house churches and little things, and they weren't meeting at the "state church," Anabaptist church, for fellowship. They said, "We're not agreeing with this," and so they started to meet there, and they started to talk about radical things. The Chronicles say that they began to discuss community of goods.
They began to talk about the sword, and instead of having that sword, they put a little stick, and so they were called the Stablers because they had just the staff instead of having a sword, and they became kind of conspicuous for this. So they came out here, and Wiedemann was there, and they started to have this little fellowship meeting in that way. But one of the guys there, Hans Spittelmaier, didn't like what they were doing.
They thought what they were doing was factious, was schismatic, and so they went and told on him. And they said, "These guys are meeting here." So the Liechtenstein, the lords of Liechtenstein, came to him and said this, quote, you can see the bottom page six, "If you go not to worship service, my preachers hold and meet separately.
I cannot tolerate you in my domain." And so this idea of being a separated church, not meeting with the state church, that was a final straw, and the lords of Liechtenstein there just said, "You can't stay here." And so they ended up having to leave. And leave they did. So on the very beginning of Lent, I tried to get an exact date. I looked in the Chronicles, I looked in several Hutterite books, and I can't get this exact date. So for testing purposes, you'll have to just get it like this.
So at somewhere at the beginning of Lent, after the start of Lent, in 1528, they went on their journey all leaving Nikolsburg, about 200 people.
And as they were there, they began, of course, they were hungry, they were starving, they didn't know what to do, what are they going to do with their life, what's going on, and the Chronicles says this, "These men then spread out a cloak in front of the people, and each one laid his possessions on it with a willing heart." The Chronicles goes just like this, "without being forced, so that the needy might be supported in accordance with the teaching of the prophets and apostles." And that is the beginning of the
Hutterites, if you would.
Just like that baptism in Zurich, this would be considered a time there where people look at a starting time. Okay. Go just a little bit further here. So as they go on, the Liechtenstein tried to persuade them. The Chronicle says he comes riding up with his horse and tries to talk him out of coming back, and they say, "No, no, you did this," and they explain all the atrocities and how they couldn't compromise their faith, and they don't believe in the sword and this kind of thing.
So he was very nice, though, and actually even helped them across some rivers and things and paid their toll for them and allowed them to get a nice start out in their pilgrimage out into the nowhere world. And so they went out. They sent four different scouts to go out and try to find somebody out there that would take us in. And they finally came back, and they found the lords of Austerlitz.
And in Austerlitz is where they began to meet, and in this area, in Austerlitz, he was so enthusiastic, he let them have no taxes for six years. He said, "I'd take a thousand of you if I could." And he was very excited about having these people here. Remember, it does them some good. Even Count Zinzendorf in the later Moravian revivals, when the Moravians finally came to his place, it did him good. His land was just a barren place they gave him.
And here, the same way in this area, 200 years before that, it did these lords some good to have people like that move in and fix the place up. So they were given, the Chronicle says, a burned-out, deserted farmstead to live on, where they lived in the open for three weeks. As the members of the church began to increase in numbers, their zeal and divine grace moved them to send brothers out to other countries, especially to Tyrol. And that's the point I want to get to. In the Chronicles, this is the thing. Okay.
So they just went through all that. They just got themselves a place, went through all this disputation and everything, finally got themselves here, and what's one of the first things they do? Page 82 of the first Chronicles. As the members of the church began to increase in numbers, their zeal and divine grace moved them to send brothers out to other countries, especially to Tyrol. Missions. They were a zealous people that wanted to continue to propagate the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God.
So here they were in Austerlitz, Austerlitz, and they began to send missionaries, especially into the area of Tyrol. Tyrol was where another zealous group of Anabaptists were meeting, and a man by the name of Jacob Hutter lived here in Tyrol. So they began to take those things, and now things start to grow, and the rapid growth that they began to have has its rapid problems that we tend to see in our churches when we have rapid growth. And so this is what they had.
I'm going to give you the chaotic beginning of now what happens the best I can, and then we'll take a break because it's amazing that they even got off the ground out of this. And you'll see how Jacob Hutter comes in, a lot like we're going to see Menno Simons coming in when Holland was just chaos, and Menno Simons and some of the different brothers up there, their very good leadership was able to bring things in Holland, same way we're going to see Jacob Hutter here in this area. All right.
And then we'll take a break. But let me first tell you how all this happened. So passion. The first leader was that Jacob Wiedemann. So here we are in Austerlitz. And Jacob Wiedemann is the first leader, one-eyed Jacob Wiedemann. And so he's going on, things are growing, things are happening. Another person that starts to come in at this time was Wilhelm Reublin. Remember him? Anybody remember Wilhelm Reublin?
He was the guy who was the first in Zurich to start saying, "You shouldn't baptize your children." Was one of the original guys with Conrad Grebel, and now he shows up with the early Hutterites here at Austerlitz. The place is growing. They don't even hardly have a place to meet anymore, so they decide to bring the community into three. Good idea. Rapid growth, quickly expand. But they still needed to work out a lot of things.
At the same time also, they start hearing about this, and these brothers in Tyrol start coming here, and Jacob Hutter is very glad with what he sees. The Chronicle says here about this time, a man by the name of Jacob appeared, a hatter by trade, which is what his name means, hatter, from the Puster Valley. So they divide into three groups. While they're there, Jacob Wiedemann starts teaching strange things. Bad manager. He's a good guy. He helped them to get out of Nikolsburg, but things aren't going too well.
These three brothers here start to say things about it, and as Wiedemann's going somewhere, maybe on a mission place, I don't know, somewhere out, they start to complain about some of the things that are happening. He's doing strange things like making the girls marry boys they don't want to marry. They're not having enough food to eat. There's strange teachings. They're starting to say, "This is wrong. I don't like this.
This is wrong." And so one day, Wilhelm Reublin's in his bedroom, and he starts reading real loud. He wasn't a preacher, but he started reading real loud, and everybody started listening to what he had to say, and he then started making all these complaints. Well, things started to go bad, as you can imagine, and they called for help from Jacob Hutter, and he came in and tried to help out with all these things.
And so things went this way, things went that, as you can imagine, and it eventually got to the point where they called for a big council. In this council, Wiedemann started saying, "You're rebellious, you're all this," and he made all this big thing and laid a big line to the fellowship, and then said, "So anyone who's with me, come stand with me." You can imagine the scene. Ah. It gives me actually a pain in my gut just to think about it. But Wilhelm Reublin's saying, "Well, okay.
Can you hear my side?" "No." Wiedemann says, "No, I don't want to hear his side." Remember how we heard that? Our memory of with the Amish there. Division. So he said, "No, I'm not going to hear your side." Well, the brothers were like, "I don't like this. I don't like that we're not hearing this side." He was insistent on it, and so eventually, Wilhelm Reublin leaves the Wiedemann group and goes to Auspitz. And there in Auspitz, the Wilhelm Reublin group is there of about 150 people.
On the way, he tells them, "I got no money. We don't know what we're going to do," and he warns them how severe it's going to be of living with here, but they felt very clear, and they followed him. And it's actually from this group that the Hutterites now trace to. When you're reading this, you're like, "Well, who's going to be the hero in this?" because it just keeps getting worse. Okay. So as they're there, though, some more people start coming in, and they start saying, "Wow, I like what this is.
This is pretty exciting stuff here." And so Wilhelm Reublin starts talking to them about the faith and starts talking about what they're doing here, and all of a sudden, he starts explaining some of his articles of faith very strange. The Chronicles don't say what it was, but apparently, something he was saying was they considered wrong. And so they got mad. The guys that said, "Well, we don't like this.
This is awful." They started talking to some of the other brothers, and they said, "Well, why are you upset?" "Well, because of what your elder said that you believe." All the brotherhood said, "We don't believe that. What are you talking about?" "Well, that's what your elder told us. I wish I knew what the issue was." But so they finally will get him. So they got Wilhelm Reublin in, and he started to say, "I didn't say that. And I don't like this copious thing at all.
I think it's wrong." The men started saying, "I'll call God as my witness that you said that." And Wilhelm Reublin said, "I'll call God as my witness that you said that." And then some of the brothers said, "Well, I saw you say that." And he was caught in this big lie. Caught in a big lie. Finally, he admits it. Admits it. After this, it says, the Chronicles say he got deathly ill. I'm thinking maybe he had a nervous breakdown. I don't know. But he got deathly ill and started laying in his bed.
Well, while he was laying in his bed, he thought he was going to die or something, and so he, during this time, had hidden a bunch of money in his house, in his ceiling or something. And so since he was about to die, he takes this money and gives it to one of the sisters there, and she's not happy with this at all, and so she goes and tells the brotherhood that he's been hiding this money, and here it is. As you can imagine, things go from bad to worse. They bring in Jacob Hutter again.
He comes in, tries to make something help, and they, of course, he gets shunned, and then finally, he grieves for a while, and eventually, he leaves and actually gives up Anabaptism in general entirely. Sad to say is the end of his story. It's not over. So they finally get this other guy. His name is George—how do you say his name?—Zaunring. And so he's the elder here. Finally, they get things going a little bit. Things are going on, but guess what happens?
His wife then goes and commits adultery with one of the brothers in the church. He then says, "Well, we're going to make a secret excommunication. I won't tell anybody. We'll handle this in secret." He then excommunicates her and brings it back into the church. Some of the brothers find out about it. They say, "This is ridiculous." He then repents. He accepts the repentance, but as you can imagine, he's not brought back into the ministry. So they call for Jacob Hutter again.
So he's coming there, and he also brings one of his buddy, Schützinger, into town, and he leaves Schützinger as the head of the brotherhood there. Ouch. One thing after another. One thing after another. Ferdinand now is starting to increase the persecution in Tyrol. He wants all these people killed and persecuted, so these brothers say, "We can't stand here anymore." So Jacob Hutter then is there along with the other brother, the old friend of his there, Schützinger, and they're both there in Auspitz.
What happens when you bring two good leaders like that together? Well, yeah, you can imagine. Yeah, that's what happened. So they start going, but still, the community, there's still things going on. Jacob Hutter starts to see this. He's a prophet, so he starts to say, "There's this wrong and that wrong." He starts to try to work with it. As you can imagine, the elders that's there, he's not very happy with that, and so he begins to complain. They almost split.
Jacob Hutter says, "Let's ask the brotherhood." The brotherhood said, "Finally, okay. You're both going to be elders, but Jacob Hutter, we want you to be the second elder, and we'll make Schützinger the head elder." Well, as you can see a little bit of Jacob Hutter's personality, it says he didn't agree to that, but he submitted to it. You don't say that. If you're in a brotherhood meeting and you feel like you have to submit something, but I guess that was his conviction. He didn't agree, but he submitted.
All right. But the interesting thing happened. All of a sudden, after this agreement, Schützinger starts to get sick. Deathly ill again, just like Reublin did. And so Jacob Hutter's got an idea. "Hey, I wonder. He's a prophet kind of guy. I think he's hiding something." And so he's deathly ill. Now he's in his bed, and sure enough, Hutter says, "I think we should call for an investigation of his house." And the guy said, "Well, only if we investigate your house too." They do.
Sure enough, he's hiding a bunch of money in the ceiling, and they're starving to death. The congregation there is poor, but he has all this stash. As you can imagine, that causes a big problem. He gets excommunicated, and finally, the community starts with the leadership under Jacob Hutter, and he starts to put things in order and starts to bring about this Moravian brotherhood, and he actually only has two years to go until he'll be burned at the stake.
So let's take a quick break, and we'll start to pick it up now when they finally got off this very rough start. Okay. All right. Welcome back from break. All right. So just like we're going to see in Holland when Menno Simons comes in and really helps a struggling radical group, Jacob Hutter certainly brought that, and all historians would agree. If it wasn't for his leadership, this thing, as you can see just now too, would have just broken up into a lot of various scattered things.
So from here, despite all these terrible setbacks, finally, the Hutterites start to prosper. This may be due, the Encyclopedia says, Mennonite Encyclopedia, to a large extent to the remarkable number of outstanding leaders they started to get into their fellowship. Hans Amon, brilliant leader. Peter Riedemann, same way. Peter Walpot. A lot of these different people came in and gave leadership at this very crucial time.
Although expelled from Moravia, the general area here, they did have some freedoms, and so they were able to enjoy some of those freedoms. Jacob Hutter was eventually killed in 1536. I'll read you just a little bit of that from the Chronicles, page 145. Volume 1, 145. "Soon after these events, in the night of St. Andrew's Eve, November 29th, 1535, God allowed it to happen that Jacob Hutter was arrested. He was deceived and betrayed at Clausen on the Eisack River in the Adige region.
They tied a gag in his mouth and brought him to Innsbruck, the seat of King Ferdinand's government in Austria. They tortured him and caused him great agony by all they did to him. Yet they were not able to change his heart or make him deny the truth. Even when they tried to prove him wrong with scripture, they could not stand up to him. Full of hatred and revenge, the priest imagined they would drive the devil out of him." So they were trying to exorcise him. I'll get a bunch of guys there.
"They put him in ice-cold water and then took him into a warm room and had him beaten with rods, and then they lacerated his body. They poured brandy whiskey, brandy into his wounds and set it on fire." That didn't kill him, though. They tied his hands and again gagged him to prevent him from denouncing their wickedness. Putting a hat with a tuft of feathers on his head, they led him into the house of their idols and in every way made a laughingstock of him.
After he had suffered all their cruelty and yet remained firm and upright, a Christian hero steadfast in faith, these wicked sons of Caiaphas and Pilate condemned him and burned him alive at the stake." He demanded it be public. Some reason they granted it to him. "A huge crowd was present and saw his steadfast witness. This took place about the time of candlemass, February the 2nd, on February before the first week of Lent, 1536.
Jacob Hutter had led the church for nearly three years and left behind him a people gathered and built up for the Lord." Okay. So that was him, and it was very powerful. He was going on a missionary endeavor, going back to the Tyrol area, and again, like I was mentioning with the Swiss brethren, as soon as you'd leave one area that would be somewhat protected, you'd get into a more Catholic area or something, they caught him there and he was gone. His wife died very bravely as well.
It was a very good testimony to the faith. The next person coming up in charge, leadership there, another brilliant leader with also a very good missionary zeal, was Hans Amon. Thereupon, he became the head bishop of the brotherhood from 1536 to 1542. He became a strong and inspiring leader.
It is this time that he organized missionary activities of the brethren set in, and this was the first organized missionary machine, if you would, let me use my term, in Europe, and it began to just pour out into all the surrounding areas. If you look at your map, as this age that we're about to go into now, and this bottom map here, you'll see all these communities. These are not people, but whole communities that begin in this phase start to be formed through the missionary activity of these brethren.
And you know what it takes. That's a lot of work. So even though the Chronicles we just pick up here and there, if you just see all the dots scattered all over that map, it can give you an idea of what these brethren had and their purpose for being as they were out to propagate the kingdom of God. Missionaries, Sendboten, if I'm saying that right from you Hutterish there, Marcus, or maybe they don't use that word anymore, were sent out in many places.
Remarkably, they knew the fate ahead of them, and 80% of them died a martyr's death. Those in the throes of death were often comforted by epistles and visiting brethren. One of the strongest missionaries of this time, and my particular favorite Anabaptist writer, is Peter Riedemann. And he wrote this book. We read from him a little bit yesterday. Now, unfortunately, it has this title because who wants to read something called A Confession of Faith unless, of course, this is your church?
But he was arrested as a missionary, put in jail, Philip of Hesse gave him paper to defend himself, and he wrote both these books in different arrangements. This one's published today by the Bruderhof called Love Is Like Fire, and this one, The Confessions of Faith. It's a brilliantly put Anabaptist doctrine. And again, there's only a couple of paragraphs on community of goods in this one, not even in that one.
And even that, I think you could apply most all those passages in some form, how we practice it with charity and helping people in any sense. But nevertheless, he was a brilliant leader, a brilliant missionary, and was able to articulate his faith in a very passionate way. One thing, and this is why they chose this title, let's give this analogy. We talked about brotherhood, and I love this thinking about all the struggles that we have now. It's our turn in our age.
And he gives this analogy, and that's why they chose the title, I'm sure, Love Is Like Fire. And the book says this: He starts to say, "With the motivation of our faith and our love to Christ is of love, and that God gives us this love in our heart." And then he starts to express how we love our brothers, and he gives this beautiful analogy.
He said, "Love is like fire." And he says, "And everyone who builds fires, build a fire like you're on a campfire, everybody knows that when you start to build a fire, if you take a stick that's too big, it can snuff it out." And he said, "The same way is with love.
That is, when love is small, one little thing that's said, one little offense can snuff it out." He said, "But also we know that if fire grows, and it grows and it grows," he said, "whole trees, whole houses can't extinguish that fire because the fire is so fervent." And he said, "That's the kind of love that we should have for God and for our brothers. And with that, we can embrace the biggest offense because it's not going to offend us because our love is so great." Isn't that beautiful? I wish we'd learn that.
All right. So Peter Riedemann wrote some of those things. Again, some of the best, I don't have time to get into it, but some of the best statements on the two kingdoms and on the use of the sword, I think, are presented in here. It's brilliantly put. And his general take, if I can do justice to it, is that the governments of this world are under the law, and we are under grace. The governments of this world demanded from God kings.
He gives the parable how, remember the parable even back with Gideon's time where there was the thorn bush, the fig, and how they gave the parable of how they didn't want to give up their domain for doing something until they found the—excuse me, I'm messing that up. The fig tree, the fig bush didn't want to give up the beauty of what they offer with the figs, the oil, until they finally got to the thorn bush, and the thorn bush said, "Yeah, we'll lead." And it was a thorn bush that's always led.
And he gives that analogy, and he quotes Micah's passage where God says, "In my rebuke I gave you the kings," paraphrasing. And so his concept is the human government is a constant reminder to us of the wrath of God that sets upon man. And we don't have to live by law, fear of law, punishment, and the sword. We live by grace and love. And these two worlds are separate worlds, but they both must be governed.
And he says, "We of Christ are being born again into an entirely new way of thinking, a whole new creation, bringing back that kingdom idea of a creation in this age." Beautifully put. I'm not doing it near enough justice, and it's in that Confessions of Faith of Peter Riedemann. Okay. So one of the things he was also good, he tried to bring these Phillipites. Remember those guys, those Moravian Anabaptists that were there? He brought them back into the community and was a brilliant leader in those things.
But there's a story here that I have to tell you because it's one of my favorites in the Chronicles. And it was a story when he got back in town and found out all the men in the community were gone. He was out on a missionary to help the Phillipites. They came in, or he was out on a missionary time. The Phillipites came during that time, but when he came back, everybody was gone. Everybody was gone. Let me find where I wrote that, page 192 of Chronicles book one. It's this scene. It's also in the Martyrs' Mirror.
That's fine too. A lot of the Martyrs' Mirror, they don't—and I'm glad for this—they don't distinguish which group you're with in the Martyrs' Mirror, but quite a few, particularly of the later martyrs, when everybody else was in a world of time of peace, are Hutterites in the Martyrs' Mirror. Okay. It says here on page 192, "In 1540, the Royal Marshal came to Falkenstein, accompanied by a mounted attendant known as Long Hans, a tall Hans, and the provost and other armed raiders.
They questioned and imprisoned brothers one by one. All who refused to agree with them and held firm to the truth were bound in pairs with iron fetters, their hands chained together." And so they came in here, these new persecutioners coming out, and they're coming against them. And while this happened a little later, they took all these brothers away, and in page 187, Peter Riedemann comes back into the community. On St.
Nicholas Day, December 6th, Peter Riedemann returned from Hesse in Austria, not knowing that the provost had carried off all the brothers. He found only sisters and children. It was quite a shocking scene. So as they were then carried there, they began to discuss things and discuss the faith.
The Phillipites who had just made it to the community because they were talking about reuniting with the Hutterites, and now as soon as they got there, they were arrested and taken in with all the rest of the men to the castle here. They were glad that while they were there, they sort of received them into the church since they felt they had a belonging there with them.
So while they got there, he said, "Meanwhile, King Ferdinand dispatched his marshals, several scholars and priests, as well as the executioner as their high priest and assistant. They used the Christmas Day, a thing rarely done anywhere. So it's Christmas. They're all there in this castle, and they bring all these priests in to question them. To begin their malicious treatment of the captives witnessed for the truth.
Some they questioned under torture regarding their basic beliefs and hopes and where they kept their treasures. The believers confessed unanimously that Christ the Savior was their only hope and dearest treasure in whom they had attained the Father's mercy." So after that, when word got around that the prisoners were to be sent to the sea—I'm sorry. So after that, they heard them. They said, "Okay, that's it.
We're going to send them to be galley slaves." And to be a galley slave, we talked about it earlier, was really, really bad. I mean, you're down there in the bottom of a ship, rowing this ship, going into battle somewhere, and people are whipping you at stinks, and you're part of some sort of war machine. So when word got around that the prisoners were to be sent to the sea, many sisters in the faith came to Falkenstein Castle. Some of them were wives of the brothers. Others were friends and relatives.
They knelt down together and prayed fervently to their Father, the Most High God, for protection from all sin and evil on land or sea and for steadfast hearts that remain faithful to the truth until death. So here's the ladies coming into Falkenstein. "And after they had prayed, the marshal's attendant, Long Hans, gave orders for everyone to make ready for departure." All right, enough of that. Everybody go.
"They took leave with many bitter tears." There they are, encouraging one another to hold firm to the Lord and to the truth. Each one commended the other to God's merciful protection, not knowing if anyone would ever see the other again on the earth. Let each one judge for himself what a hard struggle that was for husbands to be parted with their wives and fathers to leave their little children behind. In truth, flesh and blood cannot do it.
But God will seek out those who cause such great distress and punish them severely. The leave-taking, all this crying and everything, was so pitiful sight that the Royal Marshal and some of his men were unable to hold back their tears." And that's what the Martyrs' Mirror is trying to respect here. Even he starts to cry. "When things were ready and the escort had arrived, the believers were marched through the gate two by two, firmly trusting that God would protect them.
Ninety set out after being imprisoned for six and a half weeks. The sisters that had stayed behind in the castle, the sisters stayed behind in the castle, they climbed on the wall." Here we're up there. "They climbed on the wall, heartbroken in grief, gazed after the brothers to whom they were bound by divine love until they could see them no longer. Then they were sent away from the castle to return home.
Those brothers who were not taken to the sea because they were too sick or too were headed back to the castle, several of the young boys were given into the possession of Austrian noblemen, and nearly all of them returned to the church." That was nice. They were made for slaves and they were servants, and they gave them back. "The other brothers remained in Falkenstein Castle until God and His mercy led them out.
On this occasion, the Lord here vowed that He would place an inscription above the castle gate, stating that since it was built, there has never been so many devout people in it at the time." The Chronicler says, "But it's likely that He forgot to do this. In spite of Himself, He had to witness to the truth." I think the Chronicler's letting us know that sign never got put up there. But interesting. But let me keep writing these people out because you get an idea.
This great distress came upon the faithful because they testified against popes and priests, against their sinful lives, the whole idolatrous system, saying that God will punish them severely for their abominations and let them die in their sins. This is why King Ferdinand had empowered the bloodthirsty mob of priests to do as they pleased with the prisoners.
The priests were quick in deciding that the brothers deserved to die, that they could not be tolerated on land, but should be sent to sea to waste away in great suffering as galley slaves. They were to be handed over to the high admiral, Andrea Doria, for use in his fleet of warships as they fought the Turks and other enemies. But even as the brothers were being violently carried off and imprisoned, they warned the king's agents that they would not row a stroke to aid war and pillage.
Whether on land or sea, they refused to take part in evil and to sin against God because their hearts rejected all sin. God, in His invincible power, would protect them at sea and on land and keep them by His grace. So nevertheless, the king got them together and started marching them down to the sea to turn them over to the galley slaves. But interesting. This, among other things, as people began to watch them, changed the people's attitude towards them in many places.
So as you can see, they're marching through town and place after place. They're seeing all these people, with the result that they were regarded with sympathy instead of being taken for criminals when they first arrived. As well as that, even the soldiers who accompanied them often frequently spoke on their behalf and encouraged them to witness to their faith and song in other ways instead of passing through the towns in silence. So the guards were saying, "Sing, tell about your faith.
These people want to hear from you." And even the guards started to be on their side. In this manner, the band of believers was driven like a flock, a sheep thrown through town and countryside to the sea of Trieste, a sheep from Falkenstein Castle on down. And all the time, the brothers endured hunger and great hardship. They were fed with the bread of fear and the water of distress. But listen to their attitude. That was the way God chooses to reveal His truth to people who are still in ignorance.
Don't miss that point. What is all this about? What's the purpose of God? We're being marched through in chains, and they said, "That's God's design because these people are in ignorance and they can hear God's word." To be heard like the sound of a mighty trumpet. God has always provided means of grace to draw men away from evil, as in this case. They call it a means of grace.
When the believers passed through the different places where strange languages were spoken and people had never heard the truth, they found some in southern Austria, in northern Italy, who were moved by their witness to seek it. A number of the people embraced the truth and are serving God with sincere heart to this day.
They go on, and as they're there, they finally get into the castle and they begin to pray to God, "What should we do?" It says they had every reason to continue sighing and pleading that God might demonstrate His honor to them. But they believed pressed in the heart that God wanted them to make sure that they were caring for the sick and the hurting in the prison itself.
So again, you see sort of their concept of what they had in their brotherhoods there, and they began to make sure that even though they had little food, they trusted that the Lord would provide for them so they need not beg or search for bread. On the 12th night when this happened, they ended up the guards there left their bonds. They left their being bound. They were set free. Not set free, but they left them free.
They walked out of prison and escaped over a wall and let down the ropes that were there, sort of like the same way when Grebel found the ropes that brought them there. They would leave the ropes in there. They took those ropes and helped them escape. When they escaped, they made it back, and many of them made it back, but 12 of them, however, were seized by the military and grabbed them back.
Those 12 were headed over to the admiral for naval warfare and taken to the galleys with the intention of using them at the oars. But the faithful were determined to risk their lives to be flogged rather than to set their hands to rowing. We do not know exactly how each one met his end, but if they remained faithful to the Lord, it is certain that they did not have many good days left. And this is a testimony of this early time of the way they lived in that.
Interesting, right after that, they get back to the community. Remember that every man in this community was taken away. They all get back. You sigh a deep breath. Next page, it says here, "To build up the house of God, which He has chosen, God gave His servants the courage and eagerness to send brothers out in various directions.
A burning zeal for the truth was now kindled among people through the witness giving during the past trouble at Steinbrunn, that community, and drew them to the believers who bore the cross as a sign of victory on their bloodthirsty banner. As soon as they got back, they again reorganized to missions." Impressive. There was something about this spirit of who these early Hutterites were that even in their hardest time, they just didn't seem to be happy.
They didn't feel fulfilled or complete unless they were sending out missionary kingdom of God missionaries around the world. Around the world. And here is a shocking thing in the martyrs' excuse me, in the Chronicles. I'd like to see this in its if I ever get to see the original Chronicles, this is a page I'd like to see. In the Chronicles, there's a page, and it goes on for two pages.
And this list is an entire list of martyrs that were sent out to spread churches, to give the faith in all these different places: in Bavaria, in Moravia, the Lower Austria, the Puster Valley. The next one, we go all the way up to Holland and different places that these brothers went out, 22 killed, 11 killed, 4, 9, 16 in this town, 12 here, 38 in Salzburg, and spreading the gospel of the faith.
It's impressive that the scriptures they write, "The time is coming when whoever kills you will think he is doing God a service," written in the border. "Behold, I send you like sheep among wolves. They will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you." Powerful. The testimony of all these back from the time of Conrad Grebel, the time of these Swiss brethren and their passion, time of spreading this out, giving the kingdom of God, these brothers gave their life and by the hundreds.
I mean, it's just remarkable when you see it like that. I just ran a copy of that last night. It's in volume one. I'd love to see that in its real. In this area, that same page there, it speaks of the way they consider it. Here's the page. Here's the page in the Chronicles and the second page in there. It mentions some were torn apart, some roasted on pillars, some on red hot tongs, some hanged on trees. It's just but then it says, "Some did the same, were taken to prison, to the place of execution.
They sang joyfully. Their voices ringing out as if they were going to meet the bridegroom at a wedding." This comes out in a lot of these early Hutterite letters. One of the ones they're writing to the congregation, and they're saying, "Can anybody come to my wedding feast?" And that was the language he used for his martyrdom. "See if the brothers can come and come to my wedding feast." It was a powerful time. A powerful time for them. Different missionary examples as well.
Also, again, in 227, I wrote on here, "Since they're doing all these different things, it's now up to 1540. That's why he left them. And since he found things were different among us, he united with us." Talking about a different brother there. Hans Kloffer was later appointed to the service of the gospel among us as well and was sent abroad to do the Lord's work and finally fell asleep. Just these little things you see all through the Chronicles of this kind of example. 241 I have here.
Just again, just preaching at an execution. Another brother there. And 241. In 1545, a brother named Hans Blutel was also captured and reid in Bavaria, where he was sent by the church community to preach in that area. You just get these little glimpses of what it was like to be there. In 247, I have here just an interesting quote that I found talking about, again, missionaries that were killed, brothers that were sent out.
He said, "But these heroes," end quote, "Knights of God's truth were not to be frightened." That attitude, the Marine Corps of the Anabaptists. And so you see how why I spent all day yesterday talking about the mission concept. To say they were circled, that their thing was community of goods, is to totally miss the spirit of the early Hutterites. They were a people who wanted to spread the kingdom of God and would stop at nothing to be able to do that. And it's, I think, to get the wrong emphasis.
They had community of goods to help propagate this, but to get a bunch of people just to sing Kumbaya was certainly not what they were talking about. Going into this now section. Okay. I guess what I'm going to have to do, I was hoping to get further in this, but it's good. And what I'm going to do now is just give you a few of the passages of some of their distinctive doctrines. And then here's what we're going to go to tomorrow. From here, we go into just amazing, amazing times of persecution.
The Islamic invasion starts coming up more to Austria. The tension is there. The tension between the Protestants and Catholics with a 30-year war. And you could not be in a worse place than Eastern Europe at this time. And if Iwo Jima for the Marine Corps had its day, what you're about to hear tomorrow, Lord willing, with how they made it through the Turkish War, the 30-year wars, and to finally their beat down to absolutely almost nothing.
And then we're going to see a revival that happens among the Lutherans, which brings in a new whole set of people, including one by the brother Waldner, who brought in and saw some of these old records and began to revive what they had before. And so real quick, though, I just wanted to give us a little bit of a taste straight from their words of some of their distinctive thoughts here. 265. In 265 of the Chronicles, you get their concept here.
And most of these things, they have the five articles of faith here listed concerning Christian baptism. And again, they make the same sort of arguments that people have with infant baptism. One of the arguments that I think it was written, or it might have been Marpeck, but I can't remember. One of the biggest things, the defenses against infant baptism was they likened it to circumcision. And people still to this day will defend infant baptism with circumcision. It was an interesting reply. I appreciate.
I can't remember if it was Riedemann or Marpeck, where they said, "Okay. Let's say then that baptism is the equivalent of Old Testament circumcision. When did you circumcise a child in the Old Testament?" They answered back, "After they're born, right?" So you can't circumcise a child before they're born. They said, "Likewise, okay. Let it be that the likeness of circumcision is baptism, but you must be born. You must be born again.
And when you are born again, yes, we will then circumcise you with the likeness of baptism." And so I thought that was a neat comeback. I think it's a very good comeback, actually. So looking at infant baptism, the same passages that Grebel and all those do about the whole where the mention of people will give the arguments of whole households in the book of Acts. They address that here on page 254.
And they say, "Well, we don't know what happened to the whole household." But it says, "They cannot rejoice that they have found faith in God as a jailer and his household did. If they ever do, then baptize them." And just makes a lot of arguments back to them. Concerning the Lord's Supper, it's interesting. One little note I just found I just caught this last night in the Chronicles when they were talking about Hubmaier. They mentioned in the Chronicles that he gave us many insights into communion.
And so some of the Zwingliism can somewhat be so symbolic that it's almost, "Why are we doing this? Because it's just out of obedience." Hubmaier had a deeper appreciation of the sacraments, and it doesn't give any qualifications to that in the Chronicles, but it's interesting that it mentions that. And so I wonder if these early ones had a deeper appreciation of some of those things. I don't know. So they talk about the communion and give those passages there. The other ones are pretty much the same.
I guess just in this I only have a few minutes. The one that's the most distinctive to them is the Christian community of goods. And again, however you apply these passages in one form or the other, I think that it's a part of Jesus' teaching. And obviously, people have applied that different ways. So let's just hear the way these people have applied it. They gave just different scriptures. What this was was a little concordance type of thing. And Conrad Grebel did the same thing.
They would pass out little concordances because really people didn't have many Bibles. So Grebel had done a concordance, so people would just say, "Here, these are the scriptures on baptism. Here's the scriptures on this or that." And that's the kind of the way these articles of faith. There's very little talking, just the scriptures that are mentioned. And I'll just mention oh, there's pages of this, but I'll just mention just three or four of these.
In Exodus 16, it's interesting they use the term Gelassenheit under the topic of community of goods. And I don't sure I completely understand that, but the idea of total surrender. Do y'all use that? You've come from Dutch-speaking. Did you use Gelassenheit as a term? Of course, where you grew up, you would have used that. Yeah, I mean, it was church talking with the. With Emil Stoll's group and all that, yeah. I was in the Almershed. In the Almershed. Okay. Okay. Okay.
It's interesting when I was in Germany just recently, there was one lady at the hotel who spoke really good English. So I asked her, I said, "Do you still use what was the word Gelassenheit? Do you know that word?" She said, "Oh, yeah." I said, "Define it for me." And so she had a little computer there, so she dug it up and she got a definition. And it was all these typical words: surrender, brokenness, or those sorts of things. And then I asked her, I said, "Well, is this a word, a common word in Germany today?
Is this a word you would use?" She looked at me and she said, "Oh, no." And I said, "Well, why?" And she said, "Because Germans are not Gelassenheit." Ouch. Well, maybe we're not either. But anyway, this topic is Gelassenheit. Okay. They quote Exodus 16:14, "When God the Lord had led the children of Israel out of Egypt and when they were in the wilderness of sin, he gave them bread from heaven, manna, which they gathered, some more and others less.
When they measured it with one omer, those who had gathered much had nothing over, and those who had gathered little had no lack. But when some kept part of it for the next day, the bread worms and stank." This is an example for us now that God has brought the Christian church out of the Egypt of the present time. The church in the wilderness of this world should be like the Israelites.
The rich should have no more than the poor and the poor no more than the rich, but everyone should be given up for common and equal use. The Apostle Paul explains it in 2 Corinthians 8:14 is a verse they give there. Again, you can interpret that how you want. A Leviticus is another concept they use frequently. It was the concept of the Jubilee year.
What was Jesus meaning when he came and he stood in Luke 4 and he said, "Today the scriptures of the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled in your hearing." And he said, "I'm going to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." Leviticus 25, they're quoting, "For six years each man in Israel was to harvest his produce, but the seventh year was to be a year of release, a year of rest for the land, kept as a Sabbath to the Lord.
What the land bore in the seventh year belonged to everyone, to the head of the household, the manservants, the maidservants, the day laborers, the household members and strangers, the cattle and the beast. Likewise, a man who lent something to his neighbor could not demand it back in the seventh year, but had to forego the debt. For it was a glorious and festive proclamation of the year of freeing given by the Lord.
This year of freeing pointed to the time of the new covenant in Christ, which is the true year of freeing, the acceptable year of the Lord of which the prophet spoke. This is why all the goods bestowed on us by God in this new time should be held in common and Christian love.
We should enjoy them with our brothers, neighbors, and household members and no longer amass them for ourselves as during the former, quote, "Six years." Now it is much more glorious and festive proclamation of the year of God's grace than it was in the Old Testament. And I'll just give two more passages that they frequently used. Numbers 18, Deuteronomy 12, and Joshua speak of the priesthood. The Lord said to Israel, "The priests shall have an inheritance.
Yes, I shall be their inheritance, and you shall give them no possession among the people, for I am their possession." That applies to the whole people gathered in Christ Jesus, for they are all a royal priesthood of God in Christ. The earlier priesthood lived from the sacrifices which, once they had been made, no longer belongs to those who bought them, so it should be in the Christian church today. And then finally, and there's lots more, but John 17, they frequently quoted, and then we'll end with this.
In John 17, they mention here the passage that Jesus says, "I pray for them. I pray not for the world, but for them which thou have given me, for they are thine. And all mine are thine, and thine are mine, and I am glorified in them. And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world. And I come to thee, Holy Father.
Keep thou thine own name, those who thou hast given me, that they may be one as we are one." The concept that they felt is an attribute of God being represented in here, talked about in the brotherhood of the Trinity, is to be something expressed in the brotherhood of our fellowships, that this attribute of God is to be shown out, and they stakes his testimony on it that the world may know him.
And even if you don't accept all of what the Hutterites stood for there, and as we go through the different people, the Almersh groups, and as we get to Holland with the Dutch groups, I think there's principles of this that I think that no matter what, we should be able to look at and see. Because a lot of things the Hutterites gave us represented a bringing out of a lot of the concept of the Swiss brother. So that is the concluding of today.
And tomorrow, we're going to get into the brutal Iwo Jima of the Anabaptists and see where they eventually get beat down to almost nothing into their revives from a German revival.