Amen. All right, a quick word on church splits. I have just a few passages here, and if you look at my notes—oops—this I was up late, again, making sure that a lot of these things are factual. So it's a little bit more than an outline type of form, or just some of—consider it my notes, not a complete handout, but it helps me to follow through these different things. And so as we look at these ideas of—yes, sir? Oh, yeah, did you not get one?
And does anybody have one with a bunch of ink marks on it, which was my copy? All right, I traded you. All right, good. Whew. All right. Okay, first of all, the whole idea of church splits, it's my feeling that it grieves God, church splits, and many of the ways that we behave, it's not a good thing. And I have here a scripture for us, and a couple of them here. I start off with Galatians 5, and this is the contrast, remember, with the fruit of the Spirit.
He begins with the works of the flesh, Paul does here to the Galatians church. He says, "Now the works of the flesh are manifest." I mean, they're plain to see. Which are these? Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, and those things are pretty obvious.
It's the other part of the list that I think we should pay attention to, particularly with this message today, and that is hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, sedition, heresies, literally in the Greek, the ones who split, envying, murders, drunkenness, revilings, and such like, of the which I tell you before as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. In other words, it's not a minor point.
If, however you slice it, if we're—pardon the expression—if we're coming up with this kind of a feeling in our hearts, in our churches, in our spirit, it's a serious offense to God, and it's a serious sin. I think those scriptures are clear. Another passage that I tend to use, and I've tried to use as a motto in my life, is the passage there in Mark 9. It's an interesting passage when you go look it up.
The apostles are running up to Jesus at this point, complaining that people are casting out demons without them, and they're doing it the wrong way. And so they run up to Jesus, and apparently these apostles would prefer people to be demon-possessed than not do it their way. You know what I'm saying? And Jesus gives a very good rebuke to them after he first tells them that if they're not against this, they're for us.
But he gives us this word, and I think it's a good word to kind of put over this whole era of what goes on. He says, "Salt is good." He wants them to be salty, the salt of the earth. Salt is good. But if the salt has lost its saltiness, it's savors, different translation. Wherewith will it be seasoned? How can it be salted again? Have salt within yourself, but have peace with one another. That has become like a motto for me.
He didn't just say, "Hey, everything goes, be peace with everybody." He also didn't say, "You've got to be salty." But there's an incredible balance there between being very convinced, very salty in yourself and your own congregations, but when it's all said and done, have peace with one another. And it's a good passage. Now, the other passage you know I think is in John 17, and I've thought of this passage a lot lately. It came to my mind of thinking of a quote from A.W.
Tozer, and if I can paraphrase it poorly, he said something to the effect that if every problem in our life and in our church life can be attributed to a problem and an attribute or nature of God, that somehow we're missing an attribute of God, something about the nature of God. And if you focus on, if I can use the term here, the brotherhood of the Trinity that's presented in John 17, and our command to represent that attribute of God, it changes a lot of the ways of your thinking.
It changes your view of the church. It changes your view of Christianity. With that in mind, here's the verse in John 17. I'll just jump in. "Now they know, now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are thee, are thine. For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me, and they have received them and have known surely that I come out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst sent me. I pray for them.
I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me, for they are thine. And all mine are thine, and thine are mine, and I am glorified in them." So everything that I have is yours, everything you have is mine, and then he prays a little bit that I should have cut off a little earlier. May they be one in that same way.
He goes on, "Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word." This is the talking about us receiving the word through the scriptures to our day. That they may all be one. To what degree, Lord? As thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us. Why? That the world may believe that thou hast sent me. It's a testimony. He stakes his testimony.
Our Lord stakes his testimony on this issue, and so I think it's something for us to take very seriously. Since we've been going through the whole church history, I have a few quotes from the early church, and I'm giving them to you here. And one is from Irenaeus, a bishop in France, Lyons, France, around the year 150. And he has a very interesting quote here about the desire to break apart and start different churches. I'm going to give it to you.
He says, speaking of the judgment, he says, "He shall also judge those who give rise to schisms, splits, who are destitute of the love of God, and who look to their own special advantage rather than to the unity of the church, and who for trifling reasons or any kind of reasons which occur to them, cut in pieces and divide the great and glorious body of Christ, and so far as in them lies, positively destroy it." Listen how he goes on.
"Men who parade of peace," they talk about peace, "while they give rise to war, and do in truth strain out a knot, but swallow a camel." Listen to this. "For no reformation of so great importance can be affected by them as will compensate for the mischief arising from their schism," from their church split.
"He shall also judge all those who are beyond the pale of the truth," that is, who are outside the church, "but he himself shall be judged by no one, for to him all things are consistent, for he has a full faith in one God." And he goes on and talks about the one faith. He also talks about the importance of the church as the way he sees it. Now, you can beg the question, does that lead to Roman Catholicism? To its extreme, it does.
We feel, just like in the book of Revelation, there does come a time when Jesus seems to make it clear that a church has lost its lampstand. There seems to be a time that that happens. But with the wrong balance, or with an imbalance, I think we can see, do we even value the whole idea of the concept of a unified church the way I think the early church did, and more importantly, the way Jesus did? There's a quote here by Cyprian that I left here because it's such an interesting quote.
You can kind of put it into our time to come. It's in year 250, and they're getting into a split over rebaptism. And particularly here about baptizing heretics, do you rebaptize them or not? And they get into a split, and he gets into this big division with these different priests and things, and he says this in his attitude of this back-and-forth dialogue that they keep giving to each other.
And he says this: "These things, of the pure conscience of my mind and of my confidence in my Lord and my God, I have written at length." And here it is. "You have my letter, and I yours. In the day of judgment, before the tribunal of Christ, both will be read." Ouch. You know? And I think if we would keep that perspective, and every time we send an email, and every time we send our rebukes to one another, perhaps that would be a safer place for it to be.
Every one of these words will be written, will be said, will be spoken in the tribunal of God. And so I think it's good to keep that in mind. Okay, so let's bring it up to the Dutch in Holland there. I thought I would just give a little bit again about some of the differences of the cultures that were in Holland, because a lot of the original splits came from differences of two different people groups. They were the Frisians and the Flemish. And these different people groups, we see kind of—I'm a bad artist here.
The Frisians were up in the north, and the Flemish came from south, from Belgium. And I have a little bit here of the history. Even this whole division, you know how it is today with the Civil War? I mean, I don't know if y'all have been down in the south, y'all from the south, but I mean, some people have still not quite got over the whole Civil War thing. I mean, seriously, my dad has never quite got over the Civil War thing.
For instance, when I came up to Pennsylvania, he said, "Dean, that's the north." And I said, "Well, Dad, isn't Pennsylvania really the north?" And he said with all seriousness, "Son, doesn't Gettysburg mean anything to you?" He was dead serious. He wasn't kidding. When we visited New York City, we took a little bus tour. He wouldn't get out of the bus to go see Grant's tomb. Not doing it. I mean, some people never quite get over those things, is what I'm trying to say.
When I was in Scotland, I noticed people still weren't getting over the whole Scottish-English type of thing. People carry these things for a long time. I wonder, with some of these big disputes and things and wars between the Flemish and the Frisians and the different people groups, is some of that to play? I don't know, but you wonder. Here's some of the wars and things that focus right around that era. The Dutch War of Independence from Spain is frequently called the 80-Year War.
They had this whole 80-Year War, and it ended the same as the 30-Year War on the same date, but they kind of got started a little earlier in that. However, only the first, it says here, first 50 years were uniquely a war between Spain and the Netherlands. So when you go through the Martyrs' Mirror and you see all that Spanish, talk about the Spanish this and Spanish that, and, "Well, I thought we were in Holland. Why are we keep talking about the Spaniards?
Why do they have the Spanish Inquisition in Holland?" It's because of this huge fleet of navy fleet and all the attackings of the Spanish imperialism that had got up to this area. During the last 30 years, the conflict between Spain and the Netherlands was submerged in the general European war that became known as the 30-Year War. And so they eventually began to end that. They finally had their declaration of independence sort of on 26 July 1581, and they wanted their independence against the Spanish people.
William of Orange the First becomes kind of an important figure. Don't get him confused in history with William and Mary, who later in the late 1600s came over to England. This is one of the first of William of Orange helped to cause more of this independence from the Spanish, and in particular, a war that happened in that day.
The founder of the Dutch royal family, when you hear all that stuff, it's still in the Buckingham Palace and all that's still to the day, the founder of the Dutch royal family led the Dutch during the first part of the war following the death of this guy here, Egmont of Horn, in 1568. The very first years were a success for the Spanish troops. However, the Dutch countered subsequent sieges in Holland, back and forth. The Spanish kings lost control of Netherlands after a sack on Antwerp.
Antwerp was one of the main cities, or perhaps the main city of Belgium, one of them, and they had a main attacking of Antwerp and were able to take Antwerp. And so it looked like for a while, hey, maybe Holland was going to get this. The Spanish kings lost control of the Netherlands and the sack of Antwerp by mutinying Spanish soldiers and killed over 10,000 inhabitants. The conservative Catholics in the south and the east supported the Spanish. The Spanish recaptured Antwerp and other Flemish and Dutch cities.
And when this happened, the fall of Antwerp was a pretty significant thing, a pretty significant war. It caused this whole southern area, Belgium and all that south of Holland, to be taken over strongly by the Catholics, and this caused a huge migration of the Flemish into Holland. And that caused then this whole people group in Holland, which led to us some of these divisions I think that perhaps we have here. You can see my little map on page three.
There's classically Frisia, the very upper end there, and some of those things. The Frisians, a language of culture of most of the people who lived in the area now known as Holland, were originally Frisian. It was a sparsely populated area known as West Friesland, I guess one of the districts now. As Frankish settlements progressed, the Frisians migrated away or were absorbed, and the area quickly became Dutch.
And now the Flemish, like I just said, are Dutch-speaking inhabitants of Belgium, where they are mostly found in the northern regions of Flanders. They are one of the two principal cultural linguistic groups of Belgium. And so that's the different people group. Flemish Mennonites, this is from the Mennonite Encyclopedia, in order to escape from the most oppressive persecution, had immigrated or fled from Belgium, and especially from Flanders. Hence, they were usually called Flemish to the Netherlands.
Many of them settled in the Dutch province of Friesland. And the Dutch Encyclopedia gives these cultural differences. Often, the Frisians were oftentimes offended, excuse me, often the Frisians were offended by the Flemish way of living and dressing. And the later resented the greater the later resented, excuse me, sorry, I have a little mess up there. They were offended by, okay, let me scratch that. The area here in Belgium was more of a to-do area. They were more rich. They were more a well-to-do area.
The bourgeois of this area was more in the southern. The Frisians were more the farmers, the simpletons, and that type of thing. And there seemed to be some different cultural differences that even the Mennonite Encyclopedia talk about. The Flemish were actually fine dressers. The Belgian people were fancy dressers, and they liked fancy food and fancy dress.
And it says that the Frisians had, though, inside their house, some of the things that came out in the dispute, their furnishings, their linens, and things like that were spoken of as being fancy to them. And that caused some offenses back and forth. And again, just some of those little differences there. So as given to our rules, I'm going to try to go through here and look at some of these things. Here's our first couple of rules. Oh, our first one was to have salt within yourself and peace with one another.
Rule number one, have a strong world-changing conviction without being judgmental. Rule number one, have a strong world-changing convictions without being judgmental. But now we're mixing two cultures together. Rule number two, when different cultures form into a church, all must be willing to bend and give up as many of their own cultural sins and weaknesses. This is my take on it. There's different ways to look at this.
Either you can say when you come into an area, you should just accept the culture of the area, or you should say that the church is there to represent a Christian culture in their area. I have a scripture that I gave you. I have a scripture that I think applies. When Paul was speaking to Titus, and they were wondering how to evangelize into the Cretians, he gives us this passage in Titus 1:12. Speaking of the cultural behaviors of the Cretians, he says this, if you remember this shocking verse in the Bible.
He says, "Of one of themselves, even a prophet of their own said," this is Paul speaking, "the Cretians are always liars, evil beasts, slow bellies." And he says, "This witness is true." So that's the way Cretians are. He's telling you, they're evil beasts, they're slow bellies, and they're passionate people. They're always liars. And so what do you do with a culture that's like that? Well, you have to do you have to say, "Well, you got to understand their culture and bend to their culture, let them be." No.
Paul says, "This witness is true. Wherefore, rebuke them sharply that they may be sound in the faith." And so we do have cultural weaknesses. We all do. I think that the scriptural thing to do, and I'll just throw this out, and you can differ with me, is for us to not make excuses for each of our cultural weaknesses, but be able to let our different cultures help each other to see those weaknesses and be able to lay those down so that we can have a unified body together.
But that was the way it was done here, and I think some of these cultural differences weren't able to look at that. But okay, turn the page. Before we touch this period now, I want you to understand, like I said just a minute ago, when you talk about history, wars, or churches, or that type of thing, you get a wrong idea of what the people were like at that time. And I want you to look over the martyrs that I just gave you just a quick sampling of. I want you to look at that.
And I want you to understand something from this period. That all of this from, I don't know, well, yeah, about from here to here, all of this in the Martyrs' Mirror happened during this time period. So let's keep that in mind as we look at some of these debates and fights, that these were very passionate people that were taking the word of God and trying to live it out in their different places. And so think about that.
Here's the I just have this burning of this lady in Deventer in 1544, the burning of six brothers in 1549. Here this Joris Wippe, who started to be a he was a mayor who became a Christian brother, and he was killed in 1558. We have a burning of Hendricks Impkins, and it was a miraculous thing where they saw these fire and things glowing and that type of thing in 1562. And even as late as 1572, we see this burning of all these brothers and sisters there for their faith.
And so I want you to keep that in mind as we go through, that while the elders were having these meetings, the brothers and sisters were living faithfully for Christ in many places all around this area. Number three, question the questions. I think this is very important, and so I'm not repeating it, but I'm going to say it here at the beginning. When you begin to go into a questioning mode, you tend to enter somebody's worldview, and you have to be very careful with that.
I noticed the example of Jesus being very important in this, that he would often just throw back the question. I don't think he was just trying to be smart. I don't believe our Lord would have done that. But I don't think he would allow himself to enter in a lot of the debates because he knew by walking into that debate, you enter into their worldview. And I'm afraid that's what happened here several times. Another example I'll just give you before I start mentioning some of these.
I remember once I was in a library and I saw a Life magazine there, and it was called A Pin in the Hand of God, and it was an interview with Mother Teresa from the 1960s. And it caught my attention. I picked it up, and there was something never mind what you think of Mother Teresa, but there was something in there that was very impressive.
During the 1960s, the Roman Catholics were really trying to say that, "Hey, we're going to finally have we're going to finally have women ordination." And so the women liberation movement and people were starting to get excited and starting to want to stand and say, "Surely, we're going to start to have women priests." And so this interviewer was going to Mother Teresa and trying to get her into a debate on women's lip.
"Well, Mother Teresa," the interviewer saying, "you are a leader of women," notice the frame being formed. "And you are obviously, you go to the heads of state. You have all these things that you say." Nowadays, in the Roman Catholic Church, there's a big debate on should Roman Catholics have women priests. And so since you're a leader of women, I'm wondering, Mother Teresa, how do you feel? Her answer was beautiful. She simply said, "I don't think that way." Wow. I don't think that way.
And she questioned the question. And when we get into these theological debates, you'll find yourself sometimes, and you'll experience this, you'll be in the middle of it, and you realize you're so deep that somehow we're getting the right answer to the wrong questions. Somehow we need to back up. And I think sometimes these brothers should have done that. Question the question is number three. Be sure to question the question. Rule number four, understand that passionate people do passionate things.
You want to be in an on-fire, amen brother church? Then you're going to have an amen on-fire brother people who do passionate things. And that goes with the territory. You want to be in a dead church? Guess what? You're probably not going to have church splits. So that's no excuse for church splits, don't get me wrong. But it does go with the territory. I appreciate this quote from Cornelius Dyck in his Mennonite history.
He says, "In church maturity, decisions have to be made and boundaries have to be discussed." And then Cornelius Dyck says, "We have already seen how extreme positions arose with David Joris' beliefs in prophecy and Adam Pastor's tendency towards Unitarianism." We talked about him yesterday. They had to deal with those things, right? Could they be in the same community with these people who had that big of variances? Answer? No. That was over the top, right? Could you be in the same church with John von Leiden? No.
Somewhere you needed to draw some lines, right? So okay, you have to do that. He's given you that. And how these movements were rejected by the main body under Menno's leadership. But where do you stop when you begin to separate from those with whom you disagree? Much of the history of the Mennonites in the Netherlands from 1555 to 1650 showed that there was no clear and simple answer to this question. Where do you stop?
Intrinsic to Anabaptist theology, and I think it's very important that it is, is the concept of community and brotherhood. Intrinsic to that is there. And so our understanding of coming together and being a people called out of this world, called into a church, it makes us ask the question, "Well, what is it like to be this family? What is it like to be this city in the kingdom of God?" It is different than the invisible view of the church, which the evangelicals propagate.
And so it's going to have some challenges. And so I want us to hear some of these challenges. But nevertheless, I do believe that the concept of the brotherhood, the family, the city in the kingdom of God, the community understanding is very solid in any kind of representation of Anabaptist theology. And from extreme views, I've read things from very liberal scholars or writers who would still hold to this view even in their own right and their own way. It's an important concept in early Anabaptist issues. Okay.
So now we've learned some of the difference between the Frisians and the Flemish and talked about those things. And so let's go now to passion, understand that passionate people do passionate things. And let's get into the first biggie. Cornelius Dyck says, "Those people who were willing to face death for their faith were also ready to break fellowship with brothers or sisters if they thought them wrong." Right?
You ever been in a first-generation church where everybody there has either left one church or another church? That's all I've ever been in. Yeah, it happens that way. So that happens. Okay. All right, here's the story. A man by the name of Swaen Rutgers, you don't have to remember his name, just remember this poor guy did something wrong in his church that got his minister upset with him, and he ended up being called to be excommunicated.
He went to the famous church of Emden, which if you remember, right at the very tip of Holland, getting right into Germany, way up north there is Emden, which was a big area of debates. And they had debates there with the reformers. And one time there was 124 sessions of a debate with the reformers up in this area. It's a big debating area. But it was also the place where Leonard Bouwens was from. Do you remember him from yesterday?
He was that guy who went and baptized over 10,000 people, the preacher who was everywhere. Well, he was there, and he started to say he did something wrong. History did not let us know what he did wrong, but he also said, "We're going to ban him. But the thing is, we want his wife to ban him as well. If you're going to shun somebody, I don't want this man and wife thing living together. So I think she should leave the house and go away." What do you think? If you're going to shun, she's a Christian. All right?
She's a Christian. She's a member of the church even. But now he's not. Well, where is the family? What did Jesus say? "Here, my brother and my sister are my he who does the will of my father are my brother and my sister and my mother." So the issue was there. What do you do? What do you think? What do you think? Does she move out of house and home, go live in the pastor's we'll put a little doughty house over here for her and let her live there? Or do they try to work this out in the house?
What do you do with this situation? You separate them? I would think they should stay together, at least in most cases. There's no scripture that says they should separate. At least. You can maybe find some. Jacob, separate them? Draw a house on them. That's the household. Ooh. Okay. Jacob says, "Draw a house on them. That's the household." Okay. But he's been turned over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh. And she's going to just be having tea with him?
Depending on what his father or mother wanted him to do. Oh, Lucas brings up the scripture. And wife, it says there, right? Isn't the point to bring them back to the church? The point is to bring them back to the church. The whole point of shunning, you mean, is for reconciliation. Good. So where are you going with that? Well, isn't there scripture about the wife being a witness to her husband or something? Ooh. Very good.
How can you be in 1 Corinthians chapter 6, 7 excuse me, 1 Corinthians chapter 7, how could you win him without a word if you're not living with him? Yeah, good. Very good. All right. So these were the things they were dealing with, and it kind of went from bad to worse. He started saying things about it, and they finally ended up writing a letter to Menno Simon. Menno Simon said, "Let's be gentle with this situation." And Leonard Bouwens said, "No.
We're going to have this shunning." The church said, "No." The whole church got in on this, and everybody started to get a little upset, and the whole thing led to kind of a big split. And it got worse, and it got worse, and it got worse. Well, they ended up getting Dirk Phillips. Remember him from yesterday? Dirk Phillips in on it, and he's very much of kind of a dogmatist. He talks about these things very much, and he got called in on the thing as well.
Well, things then kind of got worse and worse, and they ended up calling a meeting to discuss this matter. Okay. I'm afraid we're going to have to work this thing out. It's gotten big. So they called a little meeting together in Friesland in 1557, and they decided, and now Leonard Bouwens and Dirk Phillips had brought Menno Simon to his side. And so finally they said, "That's it. We're going to make a rule for all of our churches that you have to kick him out. She's got to leave.
She's got to leave the home." And so the first biggie was the idea, "She's out of there." Whoo. Some of the brothers here at the church were like, "I don't think so." And they were very concerned, and so this started to cause a division. But Menno and Dirk and some of those brothers didn't like their, "We've decided. The church has decided. We need to go with this now." And I'm afraid it got worse. And rule number five is name-calling is not good. In the middle of a church dispute, name-calling is not good.
Bouwens, unfortunately, immediately calls the people that broke off. I didn't say that. These people were so upset about it. They said, "Ah, we're not going to fellowship with you." And Bouwens immediately started calling them, "The garbage wagon." That's not good. Name-calling, rule number five is not good. All right. It got worse. Rule number six. In the middle of a big church dispute like this, stop. Take a deep breath and don't put fuel to the fire. All right?
You knew things were going to go bad, and it's going to get worse. And it got worse. In the spring of 1557, Menno Simons, okay, they met there. Then after that, they had another meeting where they met down in the city of Strasbourg. And people from all over Germany, southern Germany, and particularly northern Germany, which is where the fellowship here was, met to discuss what they were going to do about it.
Two of the brothers, simple brothers from a little town of Mönchengladbach and certain areas of northern Germany, started sending letters to say, "I don't think this is right. Our conscience is against this. As a matter of fact, I would rather be excommunicated than do something like this.
I really think this is a bad idea." Interestingly enough, it's Mönchengladbach, which I, of course, had no idea where I got converted way up there in North Germany when my wife and I decided to kneel and give our lives totally to Christ. Little did I know that was the little town of Mönchengladbach. Anyway, in this little town, they're sending in different, mainly North Germans, and different people are sending that. And they send a letter to Menno saying, "Hey, can we talk about this?
I don't think this is a good thing, this decision that you have made." Menno, he wrote a letter. He wrote, as a matter of fact, a little work on the thorough explanation and account of excommunication. They went back and forth. They told Menno in his letter that they would rather be excommunicated themselves than go along with this extreme and un-Christlike way of putting people out of the Lord's commune. Number seven, rule. There is no situation bad enough that you can't make it worse.
Remember we talked about in the days before, you think that's as bad as you can get, it can get worse. Menno then wrote a reply, and he wrote a reply, and the name of the reply was called A Thorough Answer, Full of Instruction and Counsel to Zylis and Lamberts. Those were the guys who were complaining, "Undeserved and unjust accusation.
Their slander and bitter name-calling about our position, which is, as we believe, the true teaching of the holy apostles in regard to excommunication and shunning." Soon after, Dirk Phillips, remember him, Leonard Bouwens, the big evangelist, traveled south along the Rhine through Cologne, through Mönchengladbach, through south to North Germany and all these different areas, unfortunately with a letter saying that they were excommunicating all of these churches who disagree with him.
And particularly, that would have been the North German churches. Tacitly, I tried to find last night the exact words and see did it include the Swiss Brethren? And Peter Hoover, in his book, where I got some of that story, says all the North Germans and the Swiss Brethren. And he did specifically mention the North Germans, but I don't know if he specifically mentioned the Swiss Brethren. I don't know if you know Brother Steve.
But it was at least tacitly, "If you disagree with this view, you're out." And that's unfortunate. And that was one of the first biggies of the splits of the people up there. All right. So they go now, and the next rule is, "Don't ever let your group become a clique." You know how we talked about there being these different cultures. Well, what we just saw up here maybe couldn't really be called a culture. Probably a lot of these were Frisians.
But now we have the issue of these Flemish are starting to pour in from the persecuted area of Belgium, and they're starting to come into the church, and you got to know what to do with them. Well, the Dutch church now had been a little bit organized. There in Holland, that's such a bad. There in Holland, they ended up with four of the main churches having a bit of a conference almost. They got together, and they were able to decide, help the poor together, decide ordinations together.
One ordained person could go to the other things, and they had this little conference. But for some reason, I don't know why, the history books don't tell us, they kept this little agreement that they had between these four people a secret. A secret. They had this little, I mean, not like a mysterious secret, but it wasn't known. They didn't have a very clear thing that was talked about, and it was known. And so which leads us to our next rule. Secret stuff usually causes problems.
Sometimes in our churches, and I've experienced this probably more than some of you more established churches, but it seems more spiritual when something's not defined. Even in our ministries, in our brotherhoods, in our things like that, we think, "Well, to define it seems so rigid." And there's some truth to that. But one of the things also, though, is that when you can define something, you can scrutinize it. You can say, "Well, that's wrong. That's wrong.
I have a concern about that." But if you just keep it kind of gray, where his authority line is, is he over me in authority, or is he not? And some of those things begin to cause bigger problems later on when they're not clearly spoken up. It seems that's the kind of thing that was going here. And secret stuff usually causes problems. Well, this is what happened. So the Flemish started coming in. Their churches were growing, and they started getting a little congregation here.
And so just like, of course, naturally, they decide they want to ordain their minister. But these brothers here, these Frisian brothers, were like, "I don't know. A Flemish minister? I don't know. I mean, where is he at on his clothes and his eating?" Remember, they were kind of worldly with those things. I mean, I don't know. And some of this hesitation was sensed by the Flemish brothers. And they started to get a little offended with this, probably naturally so.
And so the Flemish congregation felt that they had been discriminated against. And then even with this minister, when they said, "Okay. We want to get minister," these brothers were hesitating on it. "Well, let's think about it. I don't know. Let's see." And suddenly they're like, "Well, what's going on?" They start to get word of this little secret group, and they're saying, "Why are we not part of this group?" And next thing you know, you got a downright offense. And the Flemish brothers are saying, "Okay.
What's going on here? I mean, we're offended. Why are you not including us? I mean, what do you want from us?" And that's the kind of thing that started to happen. Naturally, the Flemish brothers got offended, and it started to be a little bit of a split. I mean, at least in spirit. So they called in help, which is, I agree, I believe, the right thing to do. They called in help. They called in help, and I'm sure this was a Flemish minister.
And he got called in, and so they brought in a couple of ministers, and they said, "Okay. Let's look at it." And they talked to everybody and had these meetings. I don't know if you've been part of these types of meetings. And they looked at everything. They said, "Okay. We have the idea. We know what's wrong. All right? We know what's wrong. So let's call a reconciliation meeting." And here's what they did. True story. You can't make this stuff up. All right.
They brought them in, and they brought all the brothers in, the Frisian brothers and the Flemish brothers. So I know it gets kind of confusing. Who are the Frisians? Which one are they? They're the ones from where? The north. The north. Good. The Frisians are the north ones, the ones that are a little more established, and the Flemish are the new guys in who are now offended. So they brought them in. Yes, sir. And so these are all part of the Menno Simons. Yeah. Exactly. Yes. They all be part of that.
They came out of the rubble of the Melchiorites and all that. Now these are Amen brothers that are trying to establish their churches. So he said, "Okay. Let's bring in all the ministers of the Frisians and the Flemish, and here's what we're going to do. We're going to first have you Frisian brothers kneel down and confess and bow down here and confess the wrong that you had done." Amen, right? So the Frisian brothers kneeled down, and they confessed what they had done.
We were wrong in our attitudes and whatever, and then they brought them back up. Now they brought the Flemish brothers in. "Okay. Now we're going to bring the Flemish brothers in. You come in, and you kneel down." So the Flemish brothers kneel down. "Oh, this is good. We're getting reconciliation. Amen." So they're starting to admit the things they're wrong. And now these guys, ay, ay, ay. When you got this media, when you're a moderator in these types of things, it's a huge role. Huge role. You better be praying.
So these Flemish brothers are down there, and they said, "Now wait. Don't get up yet. I want the Frisian brothers to lift you up because your sin was worse than theirs." Ouch. Believe it or not, some of the Flemish brothers did it. Most of them got offended. It got worse and worse. They tried to apologize afterwards. Next thing you know what, the rift was there, and it was solid. And this division between those two seemed to never recover from that little scene. They carried it into Holland with Northern Holland.
They carried it into Russia with them. Even into Canada. The book says that some of these divisions still remain to the day of the differences that were part of that. And so rule number ten, when you're making up, don't say that your sin is worse than mine. And you laugh at that, but I don't know.
I can't tell you how many apologies I've heard and how many temptings I've been done where you want to say you're sorry and say, "But it was your fault," or, "You're wrong too." And remember how we talked about our split with the Amish and the Mennonites and how Jacob kept apologizing, and Ulyam and Kept apologizing, but they said, "But you did do that wrong." Especially you can't say your sin was worse than mine. It's not an apology. So dying to ourselves is a rule that we can learn from that.
It's kind of like marriage. Okay. If you think in a marriage that you can meet halfway, 50% you and 50% you, and have a harmonious marriage, you're wrong. Okay. It's got to be 100%, 100%. Death to yourself to have harmony and to have the beautiful thing that God wants us to have. And so if you start turfing your turf in these kinds of disputes and say, "You come this far. You come that far. You did this. I did that," you're going to end up with something like this, and it's not pretty.
So again, this rule is, don't think that your sins are worse than mine. Some brother I was talking to just recently, and he was talking about church splits and things, and he said he was meditating on the parable that Jesus gave of the log in your own eye and the moat or the speck in your brothers.
He said, "You know the way I " he said, "I appreciate it." He said, "The way I look at that is that what you see is that when you look into a conflict, that your sins, your problems, your mistakes, your part of the conflict seems so big in comparison to the little thing that your brother did, that that's the kind of thing that brings reconciliation. But if we start focusing on his and not on ours, then you're going to end up like this." And some of the ramifications of that can be huge. Yes, sir. Oh, thank you.
Thank you very much. All right. Thank you. So it's an important thing, and I think when it comes to apologies, they're very good, and we got to make sure we do them and we mean them. Okay. Interestingly enough, though, there's something more behind the scenes of what's going on here. There at the split, this time, Dirk Phillips and Leonard Bouwens, the big evangelist and Dirk, the dogma guy, they end up on different sides of the debate. And there's a little bit of history that's interesting.
Leonard Bouwens was actually disciplined by Dirk Phillips years before this. That guy who went all around of the ministering and baptized 10,000 people, well, somehow his life character towards the later part of his life started being brought into suspect. They said he drinks too much. He's too trying to grab power after Menno had died, and so they actually tried to silence him for a while and ended up with a big difficult there. Now that still comes to here, and those two end up on different camps.
Those two end up in different camps. And so it makes me wonder about rule number 11. Old unresolved differences between ministers must be dealt with or it will grow into huge mistakes later.
Sometimes we just want to go on, but if you're harboring these things and the responsibility of a minister of God and having these unresolved differences is huge and to see what that can cause and what can do to a congregation, to a country, to a nation, to a world, it would seem that there is some of that perhaps going on in this. I have here that during the division, Dirk went with the Flemish side, even though he was Frisian by birth, and the two sides shunned and banned each other for many years.
And by this point, the whole Flemish-Frisian thing, it really had nothing to do with where you're from. It just became a title, a party line of whether you're a Frisian or a Flemish because here you had Flemish-Frisians and Frisian-Flemish, and it didn't really matter who they were. And so that's kind of a sad story there, but that's what happened. So unresolved differences between ministers must be dealt with or it will grow into larger mistakes later. Okay. The next thing I have here, and we'll take a break.
A house divided itself cannot stand, especially when you cheat on the deed to buy the house. So take a break, and we'll come back and we'll pick up the next dispute there. It can be partakers of that. Yeah. Fascinating. Yeah. That's good. I appreciate you in bringing in these types of things. And I will say this, and I said that just before we started, and I don't know, maybe you weren't all in the room.
When you typically read these stories, the way it's usually presented is that a bunch of stick in the muds kept holding on to things till finally we were liberated out of all that strictness into liberation. The Mennonite encyclopedia kind of gives that when it talks about Dirk Phillips, when it talks about these days of Menno, when it talks about some of these debates. Usually, the liberal, if I can use that term, is always on the side of the hero.
But if you look deeper into some of the issues, like what Brother Stephen Russell is giving us right here just now, is that there's some serious concerns that these aren't always just easy little things that somebody was just a stick in the mud, that they had true pastoral concerns that they were trying to work out.
And when you see where the church of Holland ended up, which we're going to go tomorrow when we end up from we're going to start from the golden era, so-called, into Russia, we're going to see, well, somewhere along the line, they should have stopped and stopped progressing. And so, yeah, it's a good point. Thank you, brother, for sharing that. Yeah. Amen. So let's go in now just another split, and this one we see some unfortunate things that happen.
And the point that I'm going to bring out here is that a lack of integrity, rule number 12, is that the lack of integrity in an elder can lead to effects much greater than just his life, the life of the minister. That the integrity of our ministers, the integrity of a minister has to be very clear because when he messes up, he doesn't just mess up. He messes up and affects a lot of people. All right. I said, "A house divided itself cannot stand, especially when you cheat on the deed." All right.
As the Flemish, those brothers that now are trying to regather and regroup and all that, start wanting to go about their life, they decide they want to buy themselves a church building. This is kind of silly. So they buy themselves this church building, or they wanted to buy themselves this church building, but some bad things happen in the buying of this church building.
The elder by the name of Thomas Bentjens was entrusted with the church money, and he himself, being a good Mennonite, was happy to find a bargain. It says on the Mennonite encyclopedia. So a poor man in the city, he found a poor man in the city who was actually a drunkard who was having to be forced to sell his place because of bankruptcy. And so he kind of worked out this little deal. He said, "All right." And he had to sell his house to the highest bidder, and he was forced to do this.
But this drunkard knew this minister, so they worked out a little deal. He said, "Hey, all right. We'll do this. I'll make a receipt that says " and the drunkard was being nice. "I'll do a receipt that says the house cost 800," what, florins or whatever they call it there, "but I'll sell it to you for 700. But I don't want anybody to overbid us." And it's kind of a relationship. We're friends, right? All right. And he moved on. So the minister was happy. He went back and told the congregation.
The congregation was very upset about this and said, "You did what? You mean you entered into this deal with somebody forced to bankruptcy with a drunk and then had a false receipt, and that's what we're going to make for our church building?" They weren't happy at all. And so this ended up causing a division. The brother actually did say the elder said he was sorry. He said, "I would rather pay for this house 50 times than " or how many times than have it cause a split." But still, the church said, "No, uh-uh.
We're going to cause we're going to continue with this division." And I mean, excuse me, "We're going to continue to bring you out." And we said, "We don't think you're right to be an elder anymore. And so out with you. You can stay in the church, but you're no longer fit to be a minister." Well, kind of in this area, he was one of the more conservative brothers in the church and had, in his area, in his churches, or the influence in his church, the more conservative brothers were on his side.
And so even though this was the issue, the conservative brothers left with him, and it caused another split between this, and there began to be groups called the house buying and the contra house buying Mennonites that were now depending on whose side you were on. And that's pretty sad. And I wondered this, and again, I'm speculating a lot. Please understand. Remember what I said when we were talking about splits in the early church? When you want to beat a dog, it's easy to find a stick. And I wonder.
So he happens to be this guy who is standing for conservative values and these types of things in the church. Now they find so my guess, I'm speculating. I'm reading a lot in history, but I'm reading from my own personal experience. He's speaking out against things in the church, and suddenly these guys are not happy with all him, and now finally he does something wrong, and he's out. We just got to be careful with that kind of a thing.
I wonder, again, that's imagining a lot, but as I look into the history, I'm trying to read into some stories that maybe we be able to hear from. And so he needed to be silenced. They put him out. They ended up with a split, and that's the way it is. That's the way it went. So excuse me. I need to drink a water here. All that shot gets me.
So the Flemish were divided into the house buying and the contra house buying groups, and eventually the contra house buying groups began to be known as the young or the soft Flemish, and the house buying groups were the more conservative ones, and this ended up going further and further. So again, that rule was lack of integrity in an elder can lead to effects much more than just the life of the minister. Okay. So the weeds grow. You see I have a little picture of a dandelion there growing.
Now, as the Anabaptists of the Netherlands turned their energies to enforcing their authority and different things here, things began to get worse and worse, and the splits began to grow more and more. And this is where I ask the question of coming to the thing of at what point do you call for a slow down in these things and say, "Let's start questioning the question." I just threw up some things. These are my thoughts. Please stop me as I go rambling on at a million miles an hour.
If you have a challenging thought or a, "Hey, what about this?" and these types of things. This is stuff we all deal with, right? Unfortunately, yeah. All right. I ask the question. How many of these splits were over things like not keeping the sermon on the mount? How many conferences took out Matthew 25 and excommunicated people who weren't visiting the sick and visiting the poor and those sorts of things? The answer is zero.
And so as I've harped on all the five weeks, as the teachings of Christ are center, we do, and I admit we do, as communities of people have to deal with issues that come up. Every generation is going to have things that we have to deal with. But remember Mother Teresa's answer. Somewhere along the line, you sometimes have to say, "I don't think that way," and get back to the center. And again, just be careful. I think it's a lesson for us to be able to go further.
Again, I look at even much more than Mother Teresa Jesus' example. Let me ask you a question. And being able to not fall into frames that somehow force us to make decisions that's hurting us. All right. Number 13. If talks on unity are making even more splits, then perhaps something is wrong somewhere. We, again, like I said, and I believe this is New Testament. I think it's very important. We believe in the concept of the kingdom of God being a community of people, right? We've talked about that.
We saw that through different things. And so in that idea of being a community of people, again, I've said this earlier, but we have to be able to work some of these things out, and we have to be able to find those boundaries. And where to put an end to those boundaries is difficult. But if you're noticing as you keep drawing those boundaries that it just keeps getting worse and getting worse and getting worse and getting worse, maybe it's time to reevaluate that you've got off a balance.
I just threw out here, again, I took this from Hoover's book and just I'm not going to go through any of these in detail, but just how they started to split and split and split. In 1589, the Frisians divided, as we saw there, the hard Frisians and the slack Frisians. The hard Frisians who considered themselves the only church of Christ soon divided and the dozens of the tiny groups and subgroups. Let me jump in there real quick too.
I do think we're in a different age, and there's a good side and bad side of this, that one statement that I just said there, thinking they were the only true church of God. I don't really hear that amongst our people. I don't hear that amongst the Amish. I don't hear that amongst Hutterites. I don't hear that amongst that seems to be out of fashion today. Now, that's very good. I think some of these splits were, well, what's the true church of God? And so it became very important.
The other bad side of that is I wonder, though, have we become so tolerant in our understanding that perhaps we're not drawing clear enough lines? I just say because I don't hear that spirit in us at all, which I'm very thankful for. Don't get me wrong. But I also wonder sometimes have we just grown very weak and tolerant? Remember in Revelation, Jesus did rebuke one of the churches because they tolerated the teachings of Jezebel. Tolerance and the wrong thing is rebuked by Jesus.
And so sometimes it takes a, "No, you who teach the teachings of Jezebel have to leave," was what Jesus' story for us was. All right. So he goes on here. Hoover goes on. Some of the slack Frisians united with these other groups, the Waterlander, the Mennonites, and soon joined the Anabaptist congregations in the lower Rhine. And one thing broke up to another, broke up to another, and broke up to another. And each one delivered to Satan the other groups, and they ended up with these rebukes back and forth for years.
And that was too bad. And here I have a little chart. This is from your Cup and the Cross book from Martin. And I thought it was interesting. He did a nice graph. I love his maps and his graphs in there. And here again just gives you some of the main groups, the divisions. By the way, those who first didn't go to that very first split became the Waterlanders. I should certainly have mentioned that. They become one of the main groups, the Waterlanders, because of the area there.
And they were the first ones that split up over this shunning issue. And then the different groups that have formed here, the Frisians, the Flemish, the young Frisians, the old Frisians, the mild, the old, the sat, and then they try to come together. I'm going to get to some of these unifications with the different ones. And finally, we get to different splits. But we see this is the spirit of what's going on in that area. I do want to just throw this in now before we go to this next section.
I think it's significant, and I'm going to ask you why. I don't know why. I wanted to ask you why. The Swiss Brethren, the Hutterites, the Moravians, they had their issues. You'd have people break off. But until 1693, for over 150 years, you really had not a lot of this. Why? Why do you think? There were no major divisions until 1693 with the Amish and the Mennonites. The Hutterites had their issues. Some people broke off, but it was never a split like this.
And these people seemed to have carried their very tight sense of community. But yet it didn't just fall apart into all this sort of splitting. Dale? Were these groups as evangelical as the Hutterites? Okay. Good point. What do you think? Certainly, they weren't evangelical. They didn't have that forward mission as much as the Hutterites did and the Moravian Anabaptists did. And that is one of my thoughts. And I'll just throw this out.
I wonder, again, if your focus, even though you need to deal with these things, but if your focus becomes so much on maintenance that all your attention goes to that, does it tend to create these things? I think you do need to deal with these things. But deal with these things with a flaming purpose that's evangelizing and spreading that kingdom to the world, then it comes out, I think it looks differently.
And that was one of the things I was wondering, Brother Dale, was that very thing, is that you hear a lot in those talks the concept of the pure church, which I believe in, a visible church. We're supposed to be a separated people. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 6 and 7 that that's very much an important part of the promises of God. He wants us to come out from among them and be separate. That's a teaching of the scriptures. But that's all with a purpose going somewhere. And that is one of the thoughts that I had.
Any other thoughts? I think maybe in this group, we would have a little more of the individualistic mindset, even though they wanted to be unified. But they realized that if somebody doesn't agree with me, I can go and do my own thing, or I can get away from this. And the others were a little tighter-knit. But I think their vision behind it too, if they're all working as a team toward another goal, a team of trying to unify, that kind of team doesn't work very well as a team.
But if you have a goal out there, which is you're going to work as a team, and then when something happens, the idea was that you're working a lot more as a team than if you're all really introspective. Good, Jacob. So even unity as a goal is a wrong goal, and it's going to end up causing split. Good point. Was it Bonhoeffer that said those who focus on community are going to be the ones that destroy community?
That this desire for, "We're going to be unified," and do you, like Ammann did, do you agree to this article or not? And having to have that clarity on the unity, and when that begins to be a focus, that could be an issue. Yeah, good. Any other thoughts? It seems like the leaders almost had more control here than with the Swiss Brethren. A leadership, more of a leadership control model instead of a brotherhood model.
I've heard that said between the difference between the Dutch and the Swiss Brethren, and it does seem to come out in Menno's teachings versus the Swiss Brethren teaching. Yeah. You've seen that, Steve, with some of the differences there. Yeah, it's a good point. There's also a difference that these people are free. They are not persecuted. Well, they're tolerated. Maybe free is the wrong word. And in the south, they're not.
And the Hutterites, although they flee, they send their missionaries into areas where they're persecuted. So that's at least a. A big part of it. And it's when some Swiss go to the Alsace where they're also tolerated, they start having this problem. So it's at least easier to fight when your neck isn't quite as much on the line. It is. Yeah, amen. That's good. I go into this next I'm going to hit this point a little bit.
This next, to the point of ridiculousness, this one famous minister here, and it comes to the rule number 14. If you think you're the only one in the world that's right, you're probably wrong. And this brother, or whatever, Jan van Ophorne, however you say that, then became a minister who left persecution. He fled persecution, and he was doing everything he could. There was a unity that was starting to happen. He did what he could to stop it.
He got home to his congregation, and they were upset that he was preventing this unity. He was upset with them and ended up excommunicating everybody else in the entire congregation except himself and his wife and family. And that was all that was left. And his one true church was just us four, no more. And that began to be the extreme of splitting. I took there right straight from the Mennonite Encyclopedia.
So this sort of splitting spirit, also one of the things that I brought up, I wanted to bring up is that idea of the seeds. Once you do start splitting, it does seem to grow. I mean, I know how it is in Lancaster County. I mean, unfortunately, you can find every little flavor of what you would want. I don't like that. I'll take that. Now, I want a church that has standards but no homeschooling, but yet has I like veils, but no, I want ones that are just white and not black. And let me see it.
You can go through the whole thing. And it's sad. That's why I appreciate that story we applauded for in the Hutterites where they were about to split up. And Andreas Wirtz turned around and said, "Look, we're the only guys out here. Can't we at least get along?" And they finally called back the division and came back together. I think we need to see ourselves more in that way and work together instead of against each other and not have this shopping. So once you start it, it begins to be it continues to get going.
But here's something, though. I want to challenge some of the thought a little bit on the persecuted church concept. Look at what I brought down there. One of the things we do always say, and I think that it's certainly not it's nothing compared or it's significant compared to what the Hutterites, particularly the Moravian Anabaptists, were dealing with. But 15, stop saying that persecution will solve our unity problems. I forgot the U there. Unity problems.
Now, look at the list of just martyrs that I threw up there. The beheading of this brethren in Cologne in 1565. Cologne was right down the road from Emden, which had the big debate there. The burning of all these people in Antwerp. Antwerp was the main area there in Belgium. Another burning of Jacob Durks in 1568 in Antwerp. And even the very famous and celebrated story of Dirk Willems was in 1569 in Asperen, which would have been an area coming out of the northern area and coming back closer to Germany.
And so during this time, there was still a lot of persecution going on. There were still people getting killed. And then that leads us to number 16, rule number 16. Church problems are no excuse to stop living the faith. You hear that? Church problems are no excuse to stop living the faith. Dirk Willems, I'm sure heard about these splits. I'm sure their family talked about it in their homes when they were dealing with it. But somehow it didn't make him just go, "I forget it.
I'm just going to go and go fishing or something." He still had a very passionate desire to follow Christ even in the midst of all this. And so I think we can get into a habit sometimes, and you hear it commonly, "Oh, well, you know persecution, we wouldn't have this kind of thing." Let's show here that they actually did have these kinds of things. But it's not an excuse. It also was good for us to see. Again, I wanted to bring it out. I mean, those are just some of the pictures that I found.
But all of this, all of these martyrs were from this time period. Or it's not the beginning part, we're New Testament and all that. But I mean, there were some of these are in Hutterites and some are Swiss Brethren. But a lot of these were from this time period. And so it's no excuse just because your church is having difficulty to hang up your faith on the shelf and say, "Well, I'm not going to do these things." So I just wanted to leave that as a rule that we can learn. All right, now. Good. Quick question there.
Why do we do that? When you think about it, it seems kind of dumb just because your church is having problems to let go of the faith. And yet you see it happen. Yeah. Yeah, it's a good question. I guess we get discouraged and that type of thing. And sometimes we want an excuse. I don't know. You're really your heart's out in the world anyway, and you finally can excuse it on your elders splitting up. And so then you can run out there. And I don't know. Some of that may come from too much of a reliance on the faith.
You see the doubt. And so when you see a person that you respected and you see him making a mistake and say, "Well, that person, his faith didn't do anything." So you start blaming, saying, "Christianity doesn't work. It won't do. Around me." That's good. So I'm going to doubt it. Yeah. That's good. That's good. Especially when you're discouraged and you're kind of depressed about the whole situation, you'll really quickly start thinking about it. That's good. Remember John the Baptist and Jesus?
And they said, I mean, the man who said, "Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes the sins of the world," now says, "Go ask him, is that him or is that another?" And what did Jesus say? Remember? Look at the things that are happening. And then he said, "Blessed is he who is not offended in me." The word is snare, scandalous, so in Greek, who's not snared by these things of life. Blessed is he who's not offended in me, who's not scandalized in this world. It's important. All right, I have 10 minutes.
I got to wrap this up. All right. Things go on. They end up having some different attempts of unifying. And some of the unification was good. They had some efforts that failed. The waterlanders had broken off in one place. And they had come back, met with some of the groups that had broke off at different times. And they started to get together. The more conservative ones started to get together. And each one had areas where they were trying to come and help out each other.
One of those ones that were important was the concept of Cologne. It's in Northwestern Germany, Cologne, where a lot of the high Germans, that's the high area of Germany, and the Frisians got together and laid out some things. And one of the things they did lay out, which is important, kind of affects the later churches there, is they felt it was a mistake to make members shun their marriage partners.
And this, of course, began to separate their thinking from the more conservative brothers in the area, particularly when the Swiss Brethren and the Amish start coming up in this area right here after this time in the 1700s. Then Hans de Ries. I don't have time to go into a full detail of him. He was a member. See the picture I have of him. He was starting to be a reformed minister, but he came onto the view of non-resistance. And so he started to try to he came into the Mennonite world.
And when he saw the division, he really wanted to bring unity. And so he was helpful to bring unity. He wanted those different groups to join with this concept of Cologne. And they started calling themselves the satisfied brother or the pacified brother, the reconciled brothers, trying to get a true unity. One of those people who stood against that was a very good writer. I appreciate his writing. It was Peter Jans of Twisk.
And he was one of the more conservative ones who felt that the kind of compromises they were making in this unity was something that he couldn't agree with. And he encouraged people not to join this unity. And so he became, with the other people, they didn't want to join these different groups. And some people joined one called Separated Brothers. Some then became this satisfied or reconciled brothers. And some were in between and became the standstillers because they wouldn't choose a side. And it's interesting.
Each of them excommunicated. I mean, both of them excommunicated the standstillers because they wouldn't join either one. And that's too bad. But that's the kind of things that went through. Another thing that happened, which was, I think, a good union, was they started the Flemish, both the old and the soft, started to have wanted to unify. And even some of the waterlanders, which again came from the very beginning there, joined a union. And they met in the little town of Dordrecht, Holland, in 1632.
And I think you know what's coming, right? And they were able to get out the Dordrecht confession of faith. And this confession began to be was very well received. Not so much then even, but as it is more so today. As these unities started to go, some of the differences were still in the air. Like for instance, one of the problems that Peter Jans of Twisk was complaining about, he was still holding very strong to Menno Simon's view of the celestial flesh doctrines.
And so some of those more conservative brothers were still holding on to this. And so some of those issues were still in the air between these divisions. But I think, again, one of those moments that I love in church history, the Dordrecht confession, were able to question the question. They were able to question the question. And now I'll read to you from Article 4, talking about the incarnation. This is on page 18. This is Article 4 in the Dordrecht confession.
And here is where I think it's very hard to do in churches, especially when you go in a credo kind of way, is to take a step back and say, "Maybe I don't know." And they said this.
Article 4 says about this whole issue, "But as to how and in what matter," excuse me, "but as to how and what manner this precious body was prepared and how the word became flesh and he himself man is in regard to this we content ourselves with the statements pertaining to this matter which the worthy evangelists have left us in their accounts." In other words, let's just leave what the scriptures say.
"According to which we confess with all the saints that he is the Son of the living God in whom alone consists all our hope, consolation, redemption, and salvation, which we neither may nor may seek in any other." So they said, "We don't know." I think that deserves a round of applause. Let's hear it for the Dordrecht confession who finally was able to come to that. And that did well. That statement did, of course, have some weight there.
It gets into a little trouble in 1693 when Jacob Ammann was pushing some of these articles. It does then get received by both the Mennonites and the Amish in America in 1725. All right. And so just brings us to the last little split here in our paper is the war of the Lamb. And rule number 18 was, when someone wants to change everything, sometimes there are some dangerous theologies underneath the surface. I come out a little different on the war of the Lamb thing than even Hoover does in his book and some of that.
When I read some of the details and some of the things, it seems like we have a classic example here of the stress of the Anabaptist worldview melting and mending between the evangelical views. And how do you draw those lines? And then the conservatives grabbing a part of something from the evangelicals and the other vice versa, and it gets to be a big mess.
One of the things that really grieves me sometimes is that when I hear conservative Anabaptists, like some of your backgrounds here, conservative Beechy, conservative Mennonites, and some of that, who they'll defend their faith, but they'll be using all this evangelical talk. And they get themselves trapped a lot of time. I believe the Anabaptists have some significant, and particularly in being followers of Christ, and being fundamentalists who just happen to have head coverings in non-resistant is not Anabaptism.
I see some of that here now as we grow to this last split that I'm going to mention in the war of the Lambs. I only have a minute, so I'm just going to give you a quick summary. Some of the biggest players are this Galenus Abrahams, if I'm saying his name right. And he was a very talented minister. He got trained. And then he's for a while, he was in a church with the standstillers who didn't become Flemish or who were banned by both the Flemish and the Frisian. And that was his upbringings.
And finally, he came into the church. He actually married the daughter of a man who started to try to have that unity. And he started to want some unity and started to ask for that in his church. But he also, during this time in Holland, there was a big move of beginning to have the Arminians. And I don't have time to go into that. But the Arminians, through Jacob Arminius, began to be in conflict with Calvin and beginning to give a whole different way of looking at the whole way of reformed faith.
And the Arminians began to come against things like predestination, came against their view of the atonement. And one of the particular things that they did is they really came against the view of satisfaction atonement. And again, I don't have time to go into detail with all that. But the whole concept that the reformers really pushed that all our sins are paid by the sacrifice of Christ. Okay? It's something that's very common. The Arminians gave a slightly different view to the atonement.
And it seems that this man, Galenus, did buy into this view that it's not exactly the satisfaction that Jesus gave us an example in the cross. And this sometimes is now known as the ransom theology of the atonement or Christus Victor and some of those things. And again, I think some of this is higher theology that gets people in a lot of trouble. But nonetheless, he's into this. He wants to go.
And now the churches, he's also part of this little group as they don't believe in a visible church, these little groups of Arminians. They start these little groups called the collegiants. Your Cup and the Cross does nice words of that. And they start having these little fellowships where they really undermine, I think, the whole concept of the brotherhood and say it's an invisible church. Baptism isn't necessary to join our group. Other issues, non-resistance and things like that, are those really the important?
You even hear those buzzed around here. Are those essentials? Are those needed? And all those things are being questioned. And this Galenus is part of this group. They're also, by the way, into oneness theology and believing Jesus' name only. And so people in the church start getting concerned with him and start hearing about that. They start getting concerned. And they start calling in some people. And they call in the big guns.
And one of the people that were part of the assembly to discuss this issue was even Thieleman Van Braght. And he got brought into it and basically laid out some rules and said, "You know, you're going against the teachings of the church that's been." Galen says, "What are the teachings of men? Am I going to have to obey the teachings of men that are fallible? Am I going to obey human standards and those types of things?" And started to say, "I'm going to go on the word of God alone.
And so we're not going to listen to you." Thieleman Van Braght and all the rest of them said, "You need to be silent or stop teaching this or you leave." He said, "No. Our congregation in Amsterdam, which is the Singel Kerk there still today in Amsterdam, we're going to decide this." So they come in there. They start deciding. And they kind of, in a sense, break off, not formally, but they have their own thing there. And this is, it's met. What's the they meet on the Lambs.
There was a symbol on the church called the Lamb. So this became the Lamb. And they're in there. And then, of course, inside there, they start getting internal division. And another minister there named by Apostool started to preach. And he started to preach. And the issue that caused the division, according to John D. Roth, is he was really pushing this atonement theology.
And one day, Apostool was preaching that satisfaction atonement, the believing that all our sins are paid by Jesus Christ is necessary for salvation. And Galenus was so upset that he came in after his sermon and was railing on him and complaining about him. And people that were watching this were very surprised. And it was so significant that it made the newspaper. And it was a newspaper that called this the war of the Lamb because this was the Lamb church. Okay? And that was a dividing point.
It actually wasn't this division over the, do we submit to the church or not. That was part of it. The issue came up over a view of the atonement. Interestingly, the conservative then took the satisfaction theology and became over there. And they met in a brewery that they converted. And the brewery had a picture of a sun on it. And so they come the Zonists. How do you say that? Zonists. And then these others became the Lamists. And that became the division of the war of the Lambs that happened in Amsterdam.
So you look at all this. And the last step that I have in number 19, in general, if you ask for help in solving disputes, you should heed the counsel. Van Braght gave them some counsel. I think they should have probably listened to it, maybe save themselves some trouble. And then number 20, the biggest rule is this. If a church dispute goes to the point of complete breakdown, never, never go to the world to solve the disputes. Unfortunately. What's that? You have don't go to the word. Oh, oh, ouch.
I changed that word. Put an L in there. Yeah. That was late, probably about midnight by the time I wrote that. Never. Okay. If it does get to this point, rule number 20, unfortunately, Apostool called up the burgermeister and he said, "Hey, they have our church building. Let us in there." And they tried to sue the church. And this caused chaos and division. And the whole people started to, even the people of the town were saying how ridiculous it is to be a Mennonite.
And that's the kind of thing that I think we need to watch out for. And I gave you the scripture there. And I'll end with this. 1 Corinthians 6. "Dare any of you having a matter against another go to law before the unrighteous and not before the saints? Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world will be judged by you, are you unworthy to judge the smallest matters?" Now listen to this. "Do you not know that we shall judge the angels?
How much more things that pertain to this life?" He does expect us to judge and make decisions. But he's given us the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to make those decisions. "If then you have judgments concerning things pertaining to this life, do you appoint those who are least esteemed by the church to judge? I say this to your shames. It is so that there is not a wise man among you, not even one, who will be able to judge between his brother. But brother goes to law against brother and that before unbelievers.
Now therefore, it is utterly, it is totally a failure to you." And so he rebukes him for that. One of the most amazing things I think of Acts 15 is this. There were disputes. If you read Acts 15, it's where we had the big council. The Pharisees got born again. And they started to come into the church. But they had to struggle over circumcision. And they had disputes. It's not so much that we don't have disputes.
The miracle of Acts 15 is that even in those disputes, they said, "We can take away the law because the Gentiles had received the Holy Spirit even as we." Not that they did not decide things anymore. Otherwise, Paul's teachings, as he goes on, is ridiculous. But the fact that in the midst of that Acts 15, they were able to say, "It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to all of us." I believe the Holy Spirit wants us to be able to work out living, practical things in everyday life.
But unless we're able to bow our hearts and to be able to have that kind of spirit at the brotherhood, we'll never see that. Just think, those Pharisees left that day in Acts 15 convinced, even though they went in that day thinking of the importance of circumcision in Acts 15. So I've gone over time. Thank you very much for your patience. It was, I think, some important lessons we learned from the splits of the Dutch. Let's try to live out a life for Christ in our time.