Well, as we look at Holland, I want us today to look at some of the things that led to their decline. Now, here's the thing: I think we need to really pay attention to Holland. It's my opinion. I'd love to pretend like I'm in Switzerland and it's 1550, or even better if it's Moravia and it's, you know, I don't know, 1550 or 1540. But I think the biggest lesson that we should pay attention to is Holland, 1700. Because if there's any group that I think we look the most like, it's Holland, 1700, not Switzerland, 1530.
You know what I mean? The kind of things they're dealing with, the intellectualism, the materialism, the splitting, the kind of lack of vision, I see that in our expressions of trying to find these things. And so I don't want to throw stones at Holland today and their decline. I want to have it to be a serious time for us to look at ourselves and say, "Hey, how does that apply to us?" Okay?
But first, before I do that, I thought it would just be a shame if we left the Dutch Mennonites and didn't tell the story of Dirk Willems. I know you know the story, but it's good to tell the story. And I found this nice little video. I don't know who this is. I appreciate the way the guy tells it. And I appreciate some of his messages when I clicked on his site there.
But I'm going to give the story of Dirk Willems, and then I'm going to go to a little slideshow that I actually took from Holland when I visited the Singelkerk church there. And we're going to use that to show the decline of Holland. So here we go. I'm going to try to see how this works. Just showing the different martyrs. And remember, the spirit of Holland gives some strong faith there outside of all the disappointments that we saw yesterday.
The church still was moving very powerfully during this persecuted time. The famous Dirk Willems story. In the year 1569, a faithful brother and servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, Dirk Willems, was arrested in Asperen, Holland, on charges of having illegal Christian meetings in his home and being baptized upon confession of faith in Jesus Christ. Taken by the authorities and suffering severe persecution at the hands of the Roman Catholic Church, Brother Willems was found immovable in his faith in Jesus Christ.
Dirk Willems had the chance to escape his capture as he was fleeing from the authorities sent to take him. He was being hardly pursued by the guard on one frosty morning as he ran across some very dangerous ice. Dirk made it across the ice, but the guard sent to capture him broke through. Dirk saw that the very guard who would bring him to be executed was in danger of losing his life. Rather than continuing to run and ensuring his own safety, Dirk turned back and saved the life of the man sent to arrest him.
The guard was grateful and wanted to let Dirk escape but was given stern orders by the officers standing at a distance to capture him. Dirk was immediately brought into severe imprisonment until he could be burned at the stake. Strong winds prevailed the day of his execution. The fire was lit, but winds kept the flames to the lower half of Dirk Willems' body for quite some time. Spectators heard him cry out, "Oh my Lord, my God," more than 70 times as he lingered on in life as the flames slowly burnt him.
At this, the prosecutor turned his back in shame on Brother Willems and commanded that he quickly be put to death. Dirk Willems loved his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and took his commands very seriously. Jesus said in Matthew chapter 5, "Ye have heard that it hath been said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say unto you that ye resist not evil. But whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.
Ye have heard that it has been said, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy.' But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you, that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven." Dirk Willems dared to love his enemies just as Christ did. Would you be willing today to save the life of someone who wanted to kill you?
Would you be willing to lay down your life in order to save your enemy? Amen. Well done. So I just felt that the Dirk Willems story, I couldn't leave Holland. It would have been wrong, don't you agree, if the story wouldn't have been told. All right, so now I'm going to bring in this story. I wonder if I got this little thing here. I wonder if this works. All right, so now what we're going to do is, again, is look at what happened in Holland.
And again, as I said yesterday, it's good to remember when you're studying history, histories of war, histories of churches, you tend to just look at the things that happened: church splits, church this. And what we remember I kept trying to do yesterday was even in the midst of a lot of the very difficult things they went through, there were still these brothers that were living for the faith.
When I was over in Holland last summer, we went into the Singelkerk church, which is, remember, the last split that I talked about yesterday, the war of the lambs between the Lamists and the Zonists at the very end. While we were there, it's a huge church, but the most interesting thing about it is you wouldn't see it on the inside. It's almost like an optical illusion when you go in. And they did this because of the—when they were allowed to build churches, they still had to be very low profile.
But when you went in, this thing could hold 2,000 people. And it's amazing. Well, they gave us a tour. And then also they were very nice to us and gave us a slideshow of how they interpret the decline of the Mennonite church. I took that and I brought it. I ran and grabbed a little memory card and I took it off his computer with his permission. And I brought it to here today. And I think it's interesting because this comes from them.
I did add a few slides in through the end, and there were some that he had on the Amish itself, which were in Dutch. I went and I used the Google interpreter to bring the interpretation today. So those may be a little archaic interpretations, but I had to get them because they were interesting pictures and I wanted to see what they were saying. But here it is, straight from the Singelkerk church, the history of the Dutch from the Dutch people themselves. Okay, thank you. All right, the Golden Age.
After we got into the end of the persecution, William I, the Orange, he gave some religious toleration. And although all around them there were things happening, people were still getting burned in Belgium and that type of thing, nevertheless, like Steve Russell said yesterday, they did have a higher degree of religious freedom than even the Swiss did, even the later part of the 1500s. But here we go through this. Again, it just talks about how small this area is, that all of Holland would fit into this area.
It's trying to show us less than one-third of Ohio or how to squeeze 17 million people in a triangle between Toledo, Cincinnati, and Cleveland. So if you can imagine, everybody in Holland fits into that area. Oh, sure. Yeah. Oh yeah, we don't need that at all. Thank you. Okay, this is their slide. I took one of them out. It's a country of contrast. Still to this day, you see a heritage. This is how they drained—of course, this is how they drained all their swamp waters.
But they have some very wicked things in Holland today, extremely wicked. Some of the most wicked things on earth that's done legally in the open is done in Holland. There's also still memories of things of the past in Holland. They talk about their Orange Madness, their patriotism with their sports and their sorts of things in their country today.
They have the royalty there, which is still, like we talked about yesterday, even the kings in England and a lot of the princes and stuff have their heritage here in Holland. And so here again, William of Orange, the silent is he brought in this religious toleration. And early on, they started building these churches. And here's the one I was talking about. This is the Singelkerk here. And so it looks pretty plain on the outside. You go in and it's just huge.
And it's kind of amazing architecture when you go in there. But they started quickly building pretty good-sized church buildings. Oh, just the different things in the Golden Age that started to happen. And they got rich with their shipping. I think this is one of the things they're kind of bringing out here. Still, there were different martyrs that were going through there. This brother was actually one later on that was trying to reform things, keep things in a godly way. The different—I didn't translate those.
Different martyrs and that type of thing. Different ones there. And here, this was one of the ones I translated, so I didn't translate everything. But it shows, again, like we talked yesterday, of the divisions. These are all the different divisions that were happening during Holland during this time. And it's a shame. And that's what we spent our time yesterday looking at. And somebody had written the Babel of Reconstruction Baptists.
I used that as just a Google translation, and that's what this document over there talks about, heaping all of this stuff as a Babel, somebody said. So it was kind of judgment on us for all that splitting and everything. But like I said, a lot of times they did have some deep reasons when you start looking into them. Some different reformers. We had talked about Hans de Reis yesterday. And they started using—this was the brother who was on the first split when they were splitting over the strong shunning.
And they began to be called Waterlanders because they were in the district they were at. And today they still use this terminology called Doopsgezinden, which simply means Baptist-minded, baptizing-minded. And they didn't want to be named after any particular thing or person, so it became Baptism-minded was their—and still to this day, you'll see that written around in Holland frequently. All right, we heard about Melchior Hoffman and Melchior Hoffman and what he did.
And of course, we heard about Munster and all that happened with them. And we heard about the different things, I guess they have—it was hard times, terror and everything. Menno Simon, of course, we talked a lot about him. And then here are some of those divisions again with the Waterlanders, the Frisians, the Flemish. But still, different things came on.
When they started getting more and more towards the later part of the 1600s, you started writing martyr stories to talk about the older days and that sort of thing, reminding them how we lost something. It seemed the church was going more and more into the ways of the world, and many men and women sought to try to stop that progress. Again, as late as 1572, people were being killed. All right, so when the church is divided, here's where—this is one I took straight from the Dutch slide.
And it was talking about in this time, refugees started coming in from lots of different places. And during the split, these different churches had an active role in doing that. And here is the Singelkerk. This is the church that the slideshow—the man was standing right here showing this very slide, not this one. But so this is the Singelkerk. Still looks exactly like that today. And the different churches that were there. Here's the Zon that split with this church. Remember that? And another group here.
This would be more of the most, I guess maybe old Flemish or old Frisian there, be more conservative. Okay, one of the things I mentioned it a little bit during the Amish time, but we're going to say some things about their materialism and some of their losing the faith during that time. But it would be wrong to not mention that if it wasn't for the help of these Dutch Mennonites, I mean, they helped the Amish, they helped the Mennonites, they sent money to the Hutterites.
And I will say that they were one of the first people who got this organization together, kind of like a CAM is today, of helping people that are in terrible straits and hard times. And you have to—this is where I said in somewhere in Anabaptism, in every way, there's a sense of sharing. And definitely, you saw that. Menno said there will be no poor among us.
And you have to appreciate that of how they—James Lowry has put together this book of documents, of letters back and forth, of thanking them for many of these things. I have this book. It's nice. Okay, so then we start to get into this period, though, where things are very lax. Open. You can be out in the open. You can have your church. You can have your businesses. You can have—and they begin to grow more and more. Here's the Cloth Guild, a painting by Rembrandt.
And I suppose this would be one of the Mennonites that were part of this Cloth Guild. People were—their businesses were beginning to grow and grow more and more. And so you started to become part of the upper class, the people that made the difference in Holland in the social circles. Again, you can see some of their houses in there. There are different tapestries and things like that. And there was hardly anything by 1663 that wasn't preventing the Mennonites to become very much high society here in Holland.
Again, here's one. And these would be paintings that the family would have had made. And then they would, of course, show some of the things that they would think would be important to them. Again, paintings from Mennonites, Mennonite families. It was, again, during this time that the martyrs' mirror and different martyr stories were trying to remind them of the ways and said, "Have we lost something? Is there something that we're missing as this keeps going this way?" This was a slide I interpreted.
It was from there. And they did this slide. And I think it's very interesting. A rough translation literally said, "A Mennonites in the Netherland ascend the social ladder in the 17th and 18th century." And so they show this persecuted church down here, stepping up to here, to here, here, here, and to practically royalty here. One man was actually knighted because he had such a fabulous wealth and he had so many employees and things that he was considered a knight.
And just showing the progression of where the church was going. And somehow, somewhere along this line, they started to really lose out a lot of the vision of why they were there in the first place. And they gave this slide here. There were some of the orthodox that were there. And this is a rough translation. Just translated, orthodoxy shrinks. It begins to less and less people are considered taking these things in an orthodox sense, is the term they used. And so anyway, it's an interesting slide, isn't it?
I don't know. I don't know. Kind of scares me. But all right. All right, here's one of the fabulous mansions of one of the Mennonites. And here's his gardens and his palace and the different thing. And he was a silk merchant. And again, just showing you to the extent there were no lines or limits of what these Mennonites were able to get into at this time. Again, different paintings they had of their families, famous people, part of the banking system. And here's the Doopsgezinden financiers.
So they were bankers and such. And again, very much part of the elite of Holland with everybody else. Rembrandt had painted. Some people debated, did Rembrandt ever become a Mennonite? He at least became close. He had lots of friends, it seemed, that were Mennonites, but they never found a baptismal record of Rembrandt. And here he painted this preacher, a Mennonite preacher. And it does say, "You can't really understand him unless you hear him." So apparently, he still was a good preacher.
Rembrandt said that about him. There's the famous Mennonite preacher. And they pointed this out. I'm not sure why they pointed out the candle snuffer. I forgot. I'm sure he said, but I can't remember. They pointed out that candle. He is exhorting this lady in the faith, looking at the Bible here, looking at the Bible. Again, I'm sure not. All right, here's another one. Wrote some hymns. And here's a painting that someone had painted for their family, but they put themselves in this journey.
And he brings out how these different guys were people in the—All right, so the people of Holland began to mock the Mennonites and say, "You're hypocrites." And here's a caricature of Mennonite morals. And they're talking about the hypocrisy. They're talking about the Mennonite lie, the cake. I'm not sure what that is, the collar and the Mennonite wedding. And don't look at it too long or it gets offensive.
But again, it just gives you an idea of a lack of a vision, I think, of what was happening to the church, in my opinion. Some of the brothers tried to hold things back. Peter Peters here also was one of the people that said, "Hey, we got to stop this." Tobacco drinkers on the wide road was a literal translation there. Again, probably calling out against people smoking and different things like that. Different documents that were given in those times. By 1710, they're in Bern.
Matter of fact, right here, along these docks right there, the Mennonites and the Amish were put onto boats and finally just kicked out of Bern. And this was like the final get-out-of-here from Switzerland. And I forgot the number, but a lot in the hundreds, perhaps over the whole period of years, were kicked out of Bern and would have gone down this river, which would eventually found themselves into Rhine, went down the Rhine, and had to go all the way to Holland.
Again, I mentioned, I think, when we talked about the Amish split, I appreciate the people of Switzerland told Holland that they wanted to make sure from Holland then they get shipped to either St. Thomas or Barbados or America, but they want them out of the way. And fortunately, the Mennonites from Holland were writing the embassy here in Bern and saying, "Look, as soon as they set foot in Holland, they're free." And so that's why a lot of the Mennonites and the Amish came to Holland. That's how they got there.
But something interesting, when they got there, you had this old world of persecuted Mennonites coming, walking into church of now modern Mennonitism of the 1700s. And how many times have you heard a preacher say, or you said it, "What would it be like if Menno Simons came?" Or, "What would it be like if Conrad Grebel?" Well, it happened here, kind of. You know what I mean? You had a chance of the old coming into the progress of the new. And there were some responses.
Here's just—remember how the other people were dressed. This is some early Amish. That's actually an Amish couple that came to Holland from Switzerland. Here's some of the things they said. This guy wrote kind of a poem dealing with, "I can't believe what we're finding here in Holland." And here's what he said. He said, "Here we stand before a house where modest people dwell. Alas of Menno's folk, at least they bear his name. Here everything is grand. What an array of coaches. They are the fashion.
What snuffing and commotion. How properly the gentleman greets that lady and graciously leads her up the steps. Here we must go in with all the noise and crowds. We'll likely not be noticed. This is a great affair. No amateurs are here, but masters in the art of worldly vanity. Here is much complimenting, favoring, flattering. The bride and the bridegroom show themselves with pride. What do you think? Will any of my sort be there? Are humility and good morals honored here?
Instead of pride and vanity, no, not at all. Softly now move aside. With rhythm of music and singing, there will be skipping and dancing. Herodias has returned. She swings and glides, moving around the floor as if she teaches how to use a sword on John the Baptist's neck and offer the head upon a platter to her mother. But this is not her intention. She only wants to spread a net to catch the bird she sees set her eyes upon.
How the wine goes to the young men's head—oh, pardon me, their gentlemen—how they glut on pastries and romping of clothing. What romping, what feasting, all pleasure. So they were very grieved, especially the Swiss brother and the Amish were grieved when they got to Holland and saw they were there. Now, the Dutch were very nice to them. They gave them places. But when they tried to find communities for them to live, they really didn't know how to deal with these people. And they wrote some of these things.
He goes on—this is from their slide. They put this together. "How many a doll we see in gay attire when walking with our people on the street? See, here comes one now, strutting like a peacock. For shame, half-clothed, with naked shoulders. Shut, children, shut your eyes. But say, where is she going? Oh, to the church? Not for worship, I surmise, but rather to display her fine attire and with seducing gaze attract her lover who powdered white his woman-like hair." Ouch.
Just an insight on the conflict now of these brothers who got to Holland and what they were seeing. So they talk about—this is from their slide—the pilgrimage of a wandering Dutch Doopsgezinden. And they said, "The conservatives then left and came to America. And they became this." And this is totally this slide. I just got to share this with you because it was hilarious. So they were there.
And all of a sudden, Benuel, Esther's dad, raised his hand and said, "Just curious, where did you get that picture of that conservative family?" Because it was Benuel. I was over there in Holland watching a slideshow. And this is Benuel. And that is little Esther. Isn't she cute? And this was a picture right they were showing us in the Singelkerk church in Holland. So there's little Esther. And they were representing your family, Esther, as what became of the conservative voice of the heritage there.
So that's a pretty good legacy you have. And that's a pretty cute picture too. All right. So Benuel was pretty surprised when he saw that. All right. So again, they show just the simplicity of the way of life that was lost. And here I just ask a few questions and we'll leave this section. Why did they drop many of their old convictions during that journey? I ask the question. Why? When you read their answers, it's the same kind of things we hear today.
I tried to make those fancy little flippins, but I couldn't figure it out. Not offend. Win more converts from outside the church, people said. We don't want to be a stumbling block. Show love and the fellowship. Focus on what is really important were some of the things that you hear them say. Did it work? Look at this slide. They made the slide. 1650, 70,000. 1900, 31,000. 2010, 8,000. And that's a generous number. We were there in that Singelkerk and it seats over 2,000 members.
And Esther's father, Benuel, asked the question, "Just curious, how many people were here last Sunday?" 26. So did it work? Hmm. So why would we want to repeat their mistakes? Dillon Van Brot says, writing at that time period, "These are sad times in which we live. Nay, truly, there is more danger now than in the time of our fathers who suffered death for the testimony of the Lord. Few will believe this because the great majority look to that which is external and corporal.
And to this respect, it is now better, quieter, and more comfortable. Few only look to that which is internal and pertains to the soul and on which everything depends." This is the introduction to the Martyrs' Mirror. "For what is it a profit if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" Last slide. It grieves us to the heart that we must live to see these times and therefore speak in this wise. O Lord, strengthen our faith.
Help thy weak trusting lambs that they may not be led into error nor moved from the foundations of the most holy faith. On the other hand, through his instigation, the world now reveals itself very beautiful and glorious more than any preceding time in a threefold pleasing form, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life. Almost all men run after her to worship her as queen supreme. But all are deceived thereby.
Yea, many who have drunk of the poison wine of her lust from the golden cup of her iniquities and deceptions die a spiritual death. At the first design is aimed at the faith. So this is dedicated, directed against the true Christian life. Here lies great danger. Who shall escape these snares? He that would at no time be taken unawares by it must indeed be cautious and watchful. If you don't want to be taken by this, you must be cautious and watchful. But our very flesh seems prone to it.
Here must be fasting, watching, praying, and calling upon God for help. Otherwise, there is no escape. And this is their last slide. They left this, that all the godly people left. So all right, turn your light on. Let's take a break. Let's come back and talk about the Russian Mennonites. And that concludes our section on the Dutch Mennonites. So your little ice cream place has gotten around more than you know, I think.
It was just so funny because with Benuel there, the guy was like, "Oh, sorry." He said, "Oh, that's okay." So all right. Let's talk about the Russian Mennonites. Now, here's a first I want to give a confession about my study of the Russian Mennonites because I'll tell you how it happened. With the Russian Mennonites, there's usually a general story of the way we tell the story about the Russian Mennonites. And for some reason, this story gets repeated over and over again.
The main history that came out during the 1900s was written by a couple of ex-Russian Mennonites. And if you can imagine an ex-Beachy or an ex-Charity person or an ex-Mennonite or something writing a history of your—you know what I mean? It probably didn't come out. They were children, I think, if I recall. But nevertheless, it didn't give it in probably a fair light as it should have been. And it kind of—when you just mention the bad things that happened, you can tend to miss a lot of incredible things.
I mean, Dirk Willems is a perfect example of Holland. If we would just look at the splits of Holland and say that's all they were, shiny examples like Dirk Willems would suddenly just be faded away. And that's the way it is for the Russian Mennonites. There's some incredible things: incredible mission activity, revival preaching, prayer times. And I'm going to try to give you some of those. I get a little bit more of my confession.
A few years ago, we had a mission conference and someone had preached the witnessed or something to the German tribal people and said a lot of things about the Russian Mennonites. And me being the editor of the Remnant, I'm not the editor of the mission paper, but people assumed that I am. And it went around and I started getting this letter. And particularly, Peter Hoover wrote me and said, "How could you say these things?" I said, "What things?" And so I said, "Okay, let me be honest with you.
Okay, it's not just I hear our mistakes saying these things. I hear this everywhere. And so I want to hear some—I want some facts. I want to know some things. I need some words of their people. I want their preachers. I want their documents. I want to know something so that I don't have to just keep repeating this old story because it's not just us. I hear it from different Mennonite churches. We all see here the lessons of the Russian Mennonites and we get a bad name on them." So he sent it to me.
And I have to say, it influenced me. And I felt I needed to repent a little bit of just sort of judgmental attitude I have of some of these people that maybe perhaps make myself feel better. And I think that when we do this, we could be hurting people more than we realize. When young people don't feel like their heritage is something worth standing for, it can kind of be very demeaning. The same thing happened to the Amish people.
And I appreciate Leroy Beachy's books and his new studies with looking at Unser Leit books, of looking at the Amish in a different light. When everything has been written by you, has been written by people who have left you or are not with you anymore, you don't always get—you're certainly not going to get this drive of the passion of the people. And so I think that I think the Russian Mennonites certainly, of all the people, have got a black eye, not to mention many of your heritage with Beachy and Amish as well.
But some of that is changing with some of the new honest research that I think is going into it. So again, what I'm going to try to do today is give you the Russian Mennonites in a short amount of time that I have in their own words, some of their own words. I have a lot more documents that I'm taking this. This is during those disputes back and forth when I was researching into the Russian Mennonites is what I took this from last night.
I do have all of those in a four-part series on the study of the Russian Mennonites. If you're interested in that, I can give that to you. I gave a copy to Jacob because that's his heritage. And so I'll be glad to send that to you or I can just email it to you as well. But all right. So let's talk about it. The Russian Mennonites. In general, I'll sum it up like this.
As the different movements of persecution and just immigrations and things like that, they eventually found themselves into Holland—excuse me—into what's now Poland. And then from there, found their way down into Russia and began to set up churches and colonies there. If you could, turn your—open your cup in the cross to page 176. And I want you to look at this because it's so much part of our culture. We hardly even know where is the Ukraine and where is all this thing.
So first, turn to page 176 on your map and cup in the cross. And I want you to have an understanding of where this is. So again, here's Germany. There's Holland way up there. And then okay. So take that and go Holland from Amsterdam and just kind of stay on the north right along the ocean and skim around all that stuff there and come into that little—the Baltic Sea. And you see right when you go into there, that little valley is a spot. Now keep going all the way over and you get into Danzig.
You see that there far right there? That's where a lot of this thing has started. Okay. And so that kind of gives you an idea. Also, if you go to Holland, you see that first—take the border of the Netherlands right there to the end. And that first little notch that sticks up over Germany, you see that? That was one of the areas where the early Mennonites were as well. But this was the beginning of the progress further and further to the east. Now turn your map over to 204 and let's look at this a little bit more.
So that's over there. Now let's bring it over here. Okay. Find that notch there at the top of the Baltic Sea again, Danzig. You see that there again? Now look. Now see that river that comes out from Danzig and over there? That's a valley that a lot of the Mennonites ended up in. And Melvin Laban wanted me to make sure I mentioned that all this area and going into Poland and all this is where actually their missions have been. And so still, there's remnants of things that were there.
And he said when he went there, he hardly ever heard that before. But this particular area, again, was where some of the early Mennonite settlements had come in. And then keep going all the way down, all the way down here until you get down to the Black Sea and then go way over to the very right. You see way over there. And that's where we end up with Chortitza and the other different colonies that were there. You see that there now? Okay. That's where we end up.
It's pretty—just the walk would have been a long ways. And those are where the Russian Mennonites ended up. Okay. First, we'll get to that delta region there in Holland—excuse me—in Poland. Okay. Very early on, the city of Danzig was very friendly to the Mennonites. In 1585, there were Mennonites living there already. In the spring of 1535, 200 Anabaptist families—60 families—were expelled from Moravia. Remember that time when people were leaving Moravia and all that?
And a lot of them actually ended up in this region. Some of those did not stay. The significance of the refugee group here was so great that Menno's most intimate coworker—remember Dirk Philips? He was one of our big people that we talked about when we looked at the history and all that. He actually lived there in Danzig. And that became his spot for the rest of his life. In 1567, he made trips to Emden.
That was that little notch that comes right off of Germany right next to Holland and to mediate in a controversy between the Flemish and the Frisian Mennonites. During this time, the Mennonites suffered grievously under the attacks of hostile environments. There were different wars and different things that went back and forth and it affected them. Eventually, in 1642, they were given a privilege, a certain privilege to be able to practice their Christianity with a matter of freedom.
Although still, none of these people, even in Germany with the Swiss brother and the Amish, whenever they went, when they would grant them a little bit of freedom, of course, it never included proselytizing your neighbors. And so when that happened, it always got them in trouble. But no one got that kind of permission in those early days. Okay. Coming into the later 1600s and 1700s, from Switzerland and southern Germany, believers fled west to America.
A lot of the Swiss brethren, remember when they went to Holland and suddenly they went to America. So a lot of the Swiss brethren then came here in the 1700s. But from the Netherlands and the northern Germany, they fled eastward into Poland and eventually into Russia. And as they, the Anabaptist people from the Netherlands, by now called Mennonites, made their way east, they gradually lost their Dutch language because the people there was a Germanic people.
And that's where—oh, you always wonder why do the Russian Mennonites not speak Russian or Dutch particularly. But just because of all the Germanic area in there, they began to pick up the language of the people and began to put Platt Deutsch at that point was what they were learning. Like the people around them, the reason for this being was their continual stream of new people, both Low Germans and Slavs. They saw the way of life. Many got converted and joined the church community.
In the space of not too many generations, half of the family names of the Dutch Mennonites settled in the east were now Low German and Slavic names. And that alone shows an example of their evangelism and how people ended up becoming Mennonites in this area. And so what were these churches like? Now I'm going to give you some of the things from their own words. Again, when you just give these facts of history, I want to give you some letters and some sermons of things that—of how they talked.
And here is a convert in that area, and he gives his account of his church life in a letter. And he says, "One young seeker, Heinrich Hess, who found the Lord and got baptized by the Mennonites in what is now northern Poland, the Vistula Delta." That's that little river that you saw there. Describes what he found. "Quietly and without complaint, they, the Mennonites of the Vistula Delta, prayed for their enemies in accordance with the will of God, who helped them out of all difficulties.
The evil done them by those who denounced them before the government was repaid with good, heaping coals of fire on their head, thus bringing them to repentance. Not infrequently, such an accuser would come to the leaders of the church by night asking for forgiveness and express the heartfelt wish to be received into their fellowship. After having been instructed in the articles of faith, the church would hear their testimony and receive them.
Through the addition of such Polish and German converts, the church gradually increased. Its members also worked diligently to support themselves in natural things. But with even greater care and zeal, they nourished their souls with the bread of life. God, the Father and the Son, dwelt in their midst, filling their homes with heavenly peace." So anyway, interesting letter from an early convert there to that area. What about all those divisions in Holland? Remember, these were Dutch Mennonites.
And remember, not everybody was the elders having these fights and all these meetings. The rest were brave souls like Dirk Willems, who were living the faith. Well, what did they do with that? Well, they did have to struggle for a while. One of the problems that the believers in the Vistula Delta faced, however, was that of the divisions that they had brought from them from the Netherlands. Is there a lesson we can learn from this? All right. The generation early. Most of them belonged to the large Flemish group.
Remember them from the Belgium area that went up. But there is also the Frisians and some smaller groups of the Old Flemish, of the Neumark, the fine or the loose Frisians, etc. "For many years, these petty differences marred the witness of Christ, especially so since they claimed to love peace and refused to take war." The people back there, remember, said, "What sense does it make to refuse warfare?" their neighbors asked, "when you fight and divide amongst yourselves?" Ooh, ouch. All right. It didn't make sense.
And thankfully, after all their hardship they faced setting in far away Russia, the Mennonites overcame their division, not just one, but all of them. And eventually, those divisions of Holland began to fade away. And again, I think maybe the geography and being away from where all the hub of the division was, was a blessing for them. And here's a little bit of a testimony of their relationship between the different groups, even with the relationship between the colonies.
And here is one of the colony minister writes in his journal when he visits the Hutterite colony that eventually found its way in this northern area. "We arrived at Vishenka on Saturday, 26th, 1794, and they, the Hutterites, received us cordially. Since it was harvest time, most of the people were in the fields. In the evening, we attended the Gebetstunde, the prayer meeting. They held every day towards evening.
I preached in Luke 13:23-24 concerning the necessity of true conversion and how everyone must arrive at such a new birth. The audience was most attentive. I noticed the brothers and sisters had been greatly moved." Again, a little insight on both their preaching, the things that they would have talked about, and the way they worked amongst each other, even in the group. They remember in Holland, they were turning each other for the destruction of their flesh. And fortunately, they got beyond that.
"In 1660, they were soon charged for proselytizing and baptizing a Roman Catholic. Interesting, by 1765, a new vision for missions was established, and Mennonite churches from this area formed links with the Moravian brethren." Here's an interesting little piece of history. And by Moravian brethren, I mean like the Count Zinzendorf brothers. Now if you look at your map in Germany, Herrnhut was—oh, if I could vaguely draw Germany—Herrnhut's about here. The Delta is about here.
So it would have not been that far, Holland being over there. And so around 1730s, 1740s, Zinzendorf and the Moravians began to be very influential in this area. And these soon-to-be Russian Mennonites embraced this. And it's interesting. They even went under them for leadership.
It says here, "Because there was no other Anabaptist in the Neumark, the Groninger, Old Flemish, for 30 years before they immigrated to Russia, stood under the oversight of the unity of brethren, the Moravian church at Herrnhut, only 200 kilometers to the south. This influence and the enlightened leadership of the convert, Wilhelm Lang, who led them to Russia in the 1830s, brought much zeal and vision to the village of Gnadenfeld, where they settled in the Molotschna colony." So it's interesting.
Others close ties with the Moravians. Long before the coming of the Groninger people, other Mennonites of Russia had enjoined a warm relationship with the Moravians. Not just that group, but other groups of these Russian Mennonites at Herrnhut. And their mission worked throughout the world.
The elder, Bernhard Fast, of the large Flemish congregation on the Molotschna colony, he has several letters back and forth in the Molotschna colony sending money to support the Moravian missions and the different things they did. But here's a question I have to ask for you. Why the Moravians? I mean, there was some pretty big theological difference between Zinzendorf Moravianism and Russian Mennonites.
So the question that I have to ask is, what was in their thinking that made them think that this would be a good person for leadership? What were some of the attributes of the Moravians, the Zinzendorf Moravians? Some of the things I happen to notice, I don't know why, but they had some pretty differences, like they baptized infants. But on the other hand, they had a very clear kingdom concept of the church. The Moravians were very big on this in spreading entire brotherhoods in their mission.
And they also had believed in a very clear understanding as the brotherhood has guidelines or ways that they believe people are when they're part of their churches. They were big in discipleship, big in training. And they had a fervent love of the Bible. And they were also non-resistant, which probably was one of the biggest issues. But they felt enough likeness with them that they even used them in leadership. So okay, so in particular, how did they get to Russia? And let's talk about Catherine the Great.
15 years before the Hutterites, 24 years before the Mennonites came to Russia, it's the Moravian, Zinzendorf Moravian pilgrims interviewed the Empress, Catherine the Great, at St. Petersburg and got permission to establish a church community on the lower Volga. At first, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church opposed the plan. It was illegal in Russia for Orthodox people to convert to any other religion or for missionaries of another group to convert them.
The Moravians had a long record of missionary activity. Would they refrain from working among the Orthodox? Was it legal for them to bring Asiatic tribes into Moravian communities instead of into the Orthodox church? So the whole big thing we hear about this, and one of the things usually frequently said about the Russian Mennonites was they signed this no evangelism clause. How many people have heard that? Raise your hand. All right. Yeah.
Well, actually what they did is they came under what the Moravians had established with Catherine the Great. And the Moravians, they had their strengths, they had their weaknesses. They were actually very ecumenical. They worked with the Mennonites too. And they're dealing with people. And so their more concern would be to the totally unreached people. And so they signed this. But again, to keep it in perspective, all of the—that's interesting.
To keep it in perspective, all of the churches in this area, it wouldn't have been legal. So it's a little unfair just to heap that upon them. But she did say this in the clause, written straight in her paper. Catherine the Great, though, discussed about reaching the unreached people. And she said, "Now, the brethren, the Moravians, do not need to fear about reaching the Muslims, the different tribal people, the different pagan groups up there.
Do not fear that they will prevent from converting the heathen," she informed them, "to the contrary. I should be very happy if all my heathen subjects would become Christians." And so that is part of that document that you're always hearing quoted all the time. That's the other side of the story. She was very enthusiastic about them reaching the total unreached people. All right. So to Russia. Let's talk about how they did things.
The first wave of immigrants from the Vistula Delta to respond to the Empress's Catherine the Great's invitation to Russia in the 1780s included no church leaders, but an alarming number of unconverted people, poor folks, some of them alcoholics and quarrelsome fellows that only came along for the free land. These emperors wanted to establish their countries. They wanted there to be people there. It was good for them for people to work the land, make money, and that type of thing.
And so you would get a free—if you go there, you get a free farm. Pretty good deal, huh? I mean, how many countries would you not go to if right now, today, the king would say, "All right. Y'all can come here as much as you want. I'll give you a house. We'll give you 160 acres. And you don't have to pay taxes for six years." I mean, yeah, I'm out of here. You know what I mean? And so that's the kind of thing a lot of these people had. It's actually the same thing happened in Ohio with the Amish.
A lot of the first people that broke through the illegal zone to start further west were Amish people who did not go there with the leaders of the church. They just went for the cheap land and the free land and getting out of the hubbub of the other areas. And so this happened there. And some of that wasn't all that pretty. It wasn't an established church. And some of them that were there did some pretty discouraging things.
But sooner or later, the church decided, "Okay, we need to start and establish our colonies there." Okay. Many who visited the colonies as they went there, evidently including the Tsar himself, took with them a spiritual blessing. And the story of the Mennonites' faith and industry under great hardship at the beginning became known throughout all of Eastern Europe. Okay. So as they went, they began to set up these little societies. Now I'm going to give a little bit of background here too.
It wasn't the Russian Mennonites' choice where they could go. And it wasn't the Russian Mennonites' choice of who they could intermix with. In those days, if you were a Jewish people, you lived with the Jewish people. If you were a Germanic people, you lived with the Germanic people. And maybe there was a lot of ethnocentrism there in society. And that's how Catherine the Great wanted her society established. So some of that was by design of Catherine the Great.
What I mean is where they went to their particular spot. And this place, as you saw way down there in what's considered the Ukraine now, is where they were told to go. And so it was interesting. But when they went there, these societies that they set up, these communities that they put up became very impressive even to the Tsar. And he would come visit it and say, "Wow, this needs to be a model. We could use this as a model for how we're doing our developments even in Russia." And it became to be understood.
This is later, a little bit later there. I'm going to get to some of that. Responding to Catherine the Great's invitation, Mennonites settled in Russia, actually in southern Ukraine, on vast tracts of farmland along both sides of the Dnieper River. These tracts, they subdivided. I'm going to give you how the Russians spelled out how it's going to be. As I had earlier in the Vistula Delta into many small village blocks, every family got a modest house slot. I won't even try the different words in the village.
Enough of which to build a house and a barn and to make a garden and to keep their livestock. Then further from the village, each family got about 176 acres. Not bad, huh? And that was away from the area of land parceled out so that they could have their fields nearby and some at a greater distance. How did they handle that property and money, I asked? Okay.
While every family owned the land they farmed and the houses they lived in with permission to buy or sell one from another as they pleased, legal ownership of the colony portrayed property stayed in the hands of the Gemeinde, the church community itself. The Gemeinde decided where to build new villages, how the farms should be laid out, and what type of activities, both economic or spiritual, would serve the good of the whole.
Every village had its overseer chosen by the Gemeinde, chosen by the whole community, who could call a brothers' meeting when necessary to decide on material things. The coordinator of the brothers' meeting in the colony was the overseer, who with his leaders of the Gemeinde stood responsible for the ordering and the well-being of them all. It was sort of like a cross between what we saw in Moravia with the Moravian Anabaptists and the Swiss Anabaptists.
The Russian Mennonites, some from their design, some from the design of Catherine the Great, came into this colony Mennonite concept was what we hear today. And this is the way they organized the thing. And it was a very interesting organization. And like I said, and I keep saying this through the five weeks, the concept of the Anabaptist idea is in some expression, one way or another, is a brotherhood that comes and brings life into the world as a people instead of so much as an individual.
Although it must be made of born-again individuals that makes this community of people. This is expressed in different ways. Obviously, different expressed in the Hutterites, the Swiss Brethren, the Dutch, and now the Russian Mennonite. But you see this coming out in the things I'm about to share here and the way of the understanding of what comes out of their what comes out of the way they see the word of God and see their mission amongst these people. Okay. When did the leaders meet?
Every Thursday, the entire teaching service of the Gemeinde, that is, the elders and the ministers of the word, met at the meeting houses of the colony to decide spiritual matters. I find this interesting. I'm just giving you the day-to-day life of how these colonies were ran. Every Thursday, all the ministers met. They made decisions by consensus and confirmed them through prayer.
After the founding of more colonies in Russia, all the elders from all the Gemeinden, the Flemish, the old Flemish, the Frisian, and eventually even the Hutterites, when they remember how we met there through all their journey, ended up in the same area that settled nearby, met in periodic ministers' meetings to discuss issues that faced them all. So there was a very healthy working of the network of how all these things happened.
You had your local ministers, you had your and those local ministers met, and the different community leaders met. And there was a working together of all these brothers together. What do they think of education? In the center of every village stood a schoolhouse. The church elected one or more suitable brothers, always brothers, to educate the children. In some villages, a larger building served as the meeting house, but church meetings often took place in the schoolhouses as well. Okay. What about their wealth?
How many people have heard about the Russian Mennonite wealth? All right. Good. Yeah. All right. Well, it didn't start that way, obviously. Just like it didn't done for us, and it didn't for Holland and anybody else. Did they come to Russia rich or poor? In the beginning, food was scarce. In some of the years, the Mennonites could not harvest enough even to survive throughout the winter or make enough money to put bread on the tables in the colonies.
So following Joseph's example, they built a collection place where they would put the grain, where during good years, they could stockpile extra grain and where people could bring unneeded clothing, shoes, or supplies to be distributed to the different people in need there. So I do have an extra if you want to. We're on page eight. So again, they're developing. They're maturing. It's looking pretty good. I mean, they're working out the people that are in need. They're helping people.
And now, even when they start to now get a little excess, look to see the way they respond. What do they do with Jesus' words about helping the sick and the poor I wrote? Beyond this, the Gemeinde in Russia developed an orphans' office to care for the widows, the orphans, and the poor. Brothers chose from every village, collected funds, and managed this charitable trust. Here, you can read that on your own.
They would bring in if anybody had extra money that left over from what you needed for your day-to-day living and your household and everything, you could bring it to this. And it was used for orphans. It was used for widows. It was also used they would end up building entire colonies out of just the extra voluntary money that the Russian Mennonites put into that. People were able to use that with little loans from that. And it was a way that they were able to keep going and help the poor amongst them.
Did their ministers get paid? No. None of them, none of the servants of the church, no matter whether they were preachers of the word, counsel to the weak, cared for the sick, or handled money, or even dealt with the Tsar's government, got paid for what they did. Living among their brothers and sisters, these that loved the Lord expected to serve him through serving the rest and considered it a privilege to do so. So that's just the basics of everyday church life amongst these colonies in this area.
So what was it like? Was there ever revival? Was there ever fiery preaching and those kinds of things? Yeah, there was. And this was one of the things that shocked me the most. Early on here, there was a very impressive revival. Both the Molotschna and the old colony people, especially those that moved to newer branched colonies, had extensive contacts with the Lutherans and the Württemberger Pietist neighbors from the beginning.
But by 1850, when the second generation of Russian Mennonites had begun to take on the leadership of the colonies, these contacts had grown into weekly fellowships, joint prayer meetings, and the beginning of a massive revival that would change the life of the Mennonites in Russia forever. Apparently, it just swept through this area, and a lot of people responded. And there was a powerful revival in this area.
It says that not only did the German Protestants and the Anabaptist people suddenly find themselves praying and preaching the gospel together, both of them found kindred spirits among the Russian neighbors at once. Many Russians worked on the Mennonite colonies. Some of the Russians just around the area would get jobs and work on the colonies.
When prayer meetings began to take place anywhere during the day, in the evening, the Mennonite factories and mills and the Mennonite village homes, hundreds, first dozens, then hundreds, then eventually a truly awesome flood of Ukrainian and Russian villagers found the Lord. They started to get a nickname. The Russians called them the Stundists. The Orthodox called them from making fun of their Gebetstunden, their Gebet being their prayer meeting. And they got this nickname.
I guess it's not a bad name if that means something like you're praying people or whatever. I don't know. What is a Stundist? Can you interpret that? Stundist. Like a meeting people or? Gebetstunden would be prayer hour. Prayer hour. The Stund is really kind of like the hour, the hourly. So I don't know what you'd call it. Okay. Okay. It's probably very intuitive. Prayer hour. Okay. Okay. Interesting. Not only many converted Russians got dragged from their houses and thrown into unheated prisons.
The Mennonites that baptized them also did too. They got persecuted for this revival. Much confusion broke out as some pulled this way and that, even in the colonies. Which way and that, how are we going to handle this? Even on the Mennonite colonies, but the power of light triumphed and overcame the obstacles. New fellowships of believers sprang up like mushrooms. The scriptures, once printed and readily available in Russian, got passed out from the Mennonite colonies, scattered thousands of kilometers.
So they began to have like a Bible League where they started spreading these Russian Bibles in several different places. Revival had spread to the Arctic Ocean all the way to the northern border of Manchuria and the Russian borders with Japan. And so powerful. Powerful little piece of history that we hardly ever hear about. Was it still illegal to bring Orthodox church members to conversion? Yes, it was still illegal. But what do you do when that happens?
They eventually, by the 1860s, began holding annual mission conferences in both the Molotschna and the old colony settlements. And when you do that, how can you do anything else? So they started to get more of a burden for missions, began to want to do this. And they had an annual mission conference of what to do with all this. So what was their view of missions? I go into.
The establishment of vibrant cities in the kingdom of God gave the Russian Mennonites a sense of mission and fulfillment as it had ever since coming from the Netherlands to the Vistula Delta three centuries ago. When they started having these cities in the kingdom of God, these little places, they began to see that they were, in their sense, making a difference. This is the wicked world. And now they were planting the cities of the kingdom of God in this.
But some of the difference of the Anabaptist view of mission begins to come out in some of their words there. For time's sake, I'm going to have to jump a little bit here. Modern mission terms or the idea of missions as an institution staffed by career missionaries wasn't the complete way they saw missions. They had this type of missionary spoop too, but their concept, like that of the Herrnhut Moravians, was mission by establishing church communities.
The Mennonites thought of missions mainly in the context of the Gemeinde, the church community. And for them, every member of the Gemeinde was a missionary. Everybody was. Called by God to build on earth working models of the kingdom of heaven. Yes, the Mennonites visited and traveled and sought out seekers near and far. They were not afraid of moving into the remotest village and set up these Gemeinden as the Lord opened the doors.
But they understood the great commission as a corporate, never as an individual or institutional calling. They believed this was the work of the church. And I think that helped kind of prevent them from having the and the Herrnhut Moravians, you see this. Certainly, the Hutterites, you see this, early Swiss Brethren perhaps as well. But the concept of the conflict we see in, are we going to concentrate on the church? Are we going to concentrate on the mission? They would say, well, the church is mission.
And they would take that into the foreign lands. And that's the way they kind of saw it and more emphasized it in that way. And so everybody was part of what was going on. Here you can read on your own there one of these early missionaries with a burden gives sort of this understanding in his letter there that I have. It's interesting just the way he puts it.
Talking about he looks at the whole progress of through Abraham and through the nations of Israel and to Jesus and to the people in the kingdom of God that the church is to represent God's kingdom on earth. And that's the type of thing that he gave.
Skipping down like the bottom of page 11, there I have, by the 1850s, the first generation of Mennonites in Russia had organized a mission society to bring the gospel to the heathen, working closely with their fellow believers in the Vistula Delta and in the Netherlands. They prepared their young people for mission service at home and abroad and began to move. In 1854, the Mennonites of Russia sent 300 German Reichsstaller with the letter to the Doopsgezinden, sending out people to foreign fields in Amsterdam.
Interestingly enough, there was a Dutch he was Dutch Mennonite who wanted to bring the gospel to Indonesia. But everybody kept getting persecuted. They got converted. So he then decided, well, he's going to try. And he used the Russian Mennonite technique of bringing in a colony. This is in your book on page 244, I think it is. It tells the story. That's in there. You'll see it in your reading when you get to the different mission fields.
But as he goes in there, 344 is where it's at, page 344, he decides people are getting killed. So he brings in a colony approach to the Muslims and ends up incredibly successful. Hundreds of Muslims are getting converted and into the thousand now to the day. And still in a district in Indonesia now, there's many Mennonites that were converted from the fruit of what happened from these people. It's an interesting piece of Muslim history.
I was just talking with Chris beforehand and looking at some of the facts of this. Again, this sort of thing kept going. It began more and more progress was happening from this. They get into different areas. Not only the Java and the Sumatra, they started sending missionaries to Java and the Sumatra. Did the missionaries go starting new works among the Muslims and the Hindus, baptizing thousands within the space of 20 years, but also to India. And while this was happening, much had begun to happen at home as well.
A group, a person, and I dug this one out for you, Brother Jacob, Johann Peters started to get a burden to take the gospel to Siberia. And as he went to Siberia, this is a little later in the 1900s. But when they started getting into the revolution, the Bolshevik revolution, and people were saying, we're going to America, he wrote a letter to the colony. He said, don't go to America. Come up here. He said, there's freedom of religion up here. Let's preach to the far up lands of Siberia. And many of them did.
And he talks in letters of how 45 degrees below zero. He talks about losing his 16-year-old daughter on the journey. And very impressive missionary of Johann Peters who came from, I think it's Molotschna or no, no, it was the other one. Yeah. Community, Chortitza community. So impressive, impressive stuff. They continue these different things and different activities. And that just made a passion within these people that was very impressive. A passion that we just don't usually hear about.
And in particular, if you turn to page 13, you get to kind of a point within some of these people and all this type of going on where a lot of things are coming together, which really comes out right. And I have here, when you mix top of page 13, when you mix strong kingdom communities with a mission outreach and revival preaching, you get fire. And listen to this sermon preached at a mission conference in the colonies. I'm preached by them.
When Heinrich Dirks, the brother sent to Sumatra by the Groninger, old Flemish from Gnadenfeld, returned after many fruitful years on that island, eager churches throughout and Russian colonies waited their turn to hear him preach. Also, another real quick note in that Peters, when I was reading some of his letters, some of the people were saying, oh, stay here and preach to us more. He said, no, you've heard the gospel. I'm preaching to someone who hasn't. And he kept doing that.
But here's this mission conference. His brother's back from Sumatra. And he's now preaching in a Russian colony about his feeling on the passion of missions. And he says this. He says, I came to cast fire upon the earth. This is how the conference started. And oh, how I would it were it already kindled, he quotes. Certainly, the fire Jesus came to kindle on the earth was not a natural one. No. It was a supernatural, a spiritual fire.
The fire of the knowledge of God, the fire of truth and love, the fire of eternal life and the Holy Spirit. Taking the knowledge of God, take truth and love, take eternal life and the Holy Spirit together, and the Jesus fire breaks out. Amen. This fire burned within him before the foundation of the world. This fire brought him from heaven to earth. It drove him while here to spark it and fan it and flame it in the hearts of his fellow men. Jesus fire already burns in many believers' hearts.
But oh, may it burn in our hearts as well. And he goes on and on like this in a very impressive way. I'll skip over it just for time's sake. But again, when a lot of these things started coming together, it was impressive. I have here on 14, what was their preaching like? Did they preach a clear conversion? I have from a letter when Isaac Pinner, a young school teacher in the old colony village in Rosengart, had questioned about his soul salvation.
He wrote to Jacob Dyck, the leading elder of that settlement who lived in New Osterwick at the time. Elder Dyck wrote back. And for time's sake, I won't give it to you. But he there and he talks wonderfully about the needing of the conviction of the sin, of true repentance, of walking through your doubts, of having assurance of salvation and walking through that. I encourage you to read through that letter. I gave it to you there. And it's passionate the way.
And finally, he says there towards the bottom of 15, therefore seek to love Jesus above all else and to obtain forgiveness of sin through the merits of his blood. Pray for the gift of the Holy Spirit who guards your hearts in God and seek to order your whole life in accordance with his calling. We will not lay a good foundation if we rely too heavily on the advice of others. Do not bury your heart to someone that seems to be pious. It will only bring you more unrest. Submit yourself wholeheartedly to Jesus.
He will never regret it. And if we endure to the end, we shall reign with him. All right. Wow. Okay. You never heard about that of the Russian Mennonites, did you? I didn't. I had to repent when I started reading some of these things because, wow, you know, I mean, how dare we just wrap them up in some sort of prejudice when we could clearly see there was serious light, fire, and missions going on there. So what about the problems? All right. I have just a few minutes and I'm going to have to wrap it up.
The problems. Some of the problems came from different tugs. First, the Russian Ministry of the Interior, the government, they wanted to see these people as this great example to everyone. And almost from the beginning, they made regular visits to the colonies, giving out advice and passing legislation. The czar visited. He started telling people about it. And he really wanted to make this a model. And so he started to make different things.
And this one well-meaning brother, Johann Cornies, which remember in the Hutterite one was actually who helped the Hutterites come to this area. And he was extremely wealthy. The colonies were there, but a lot of the more rich people would end up buying land outside of the colonies. He started getting into these different things, started growing more and more and more wealthy.
And some of the abuses that we hear about things that are happening, especially with the wealth and the people owning people that were living there, were some of these rich people who had gathered out even beyond the area of the colony. Cornies made some good agricultural changes, but he wanted to bring everything very much in a money-making type of thing. And it had its effect on them.
So then the czar said, well, okay, to do this type of industry, those people who don't have land, we're going to have them go work in the factories over here and then they can pay. And they're like, we don't want to work in the factories. We want to work with the brotherhood. And these types of stress began to be from the influence and the patting of the back that happened from the Russian government. Switch over to 17. And so that was a stress on them. The second was the second direction became that of, excuse me.
Oh, the next one was the pietism. Some of that revivalism, some of those things that they were with the people was good. But a lot of those guys who they joined hand in hands with the revivals and all those different things began to say, it's kind of quaint that y'all are all living here like this. It's odd that you have strange views of non-resistance and things like this. And what's really important is our revival.
And began somehow their understanding of the church as a kingdom, a kingdom of God, and that revival revived a people suddenly started very strangely turning into an evangelicalism of their revival. And they ended up starting sending their children to evangelical Bible schools, Protestant Bible schools. And suddenly just the way of thinking, the worldview, instead of seeing it as a kingdom planted in this world, began to be a get-saved revival type of an experience. And that began to have influences on it.
And they had to work their way out through those different things and the different problems that that caused. And then, of course, there were those who wanted to continue the third way, the way they went. As those pressures began to go, more and more things developed. And the colonies that they planted from them spread in the different directions of those different ways.
Particularly in some of those ones that took a more capitalistic, if you would, or a more, how do you, what do you say, business-minded one became very, very wealthy. And some of the records that we heard about the areas of some of the abuse did happen in those sort of colonies. And some of it was very bad. I did read that even at the places that, okay, and in these areas, the way the czars kept trying to mess with them, they became a state within a state. They didn't really try to do that.
But some of Catherine the Great's influences and some of the way they had to work things out, they became a state within the state. So they needed a mayor there and some people that ran the things. I read that those people were not brothers. You'll read this in the complete document that the czar government would bring those people in. But the way that worked back and forth with some of the colonies got ugly. And there's some scenes in there that are frankly very ugly.
Building up to the Bolshevik Revolution, we come into the 1900s. And more and more they start to be losing their right to have non-resistance and to not go to war. They begin to have stresses with that. Some of them started to leave. Then the others started to stay. In the late 1800s, many of them caved to Manitoba. And one entire colony came during that time. And it was very impressive for them to stick together through all that.
By the time you get to Stalin, by the time you get to the Communist Revolution, it was disaster. And Stalin let for no exemptions. No one's going to do it. You're going to do it my way or the highway. And so they tried the best they could to get on the highway. But Stalin didn't want them to go. And so they had to go in Moscow for a while. They tried to get out. And it became a very rough history of that. And there's some terrible stories.
There's actually a little interview I noticed on the internet of people that stayed and tried. And during the Ukraine between the White or the Bolshevik Revolution between the White Army and the Red Army. And there was a man you see the picture of on the last page who was working in one of the colonies. And he became this marauding warrior who came in and just wiped out many of the colonies that were there.
And lots of stories like what we read from the Hutterites during the 30-year war and the Turkish-Russian war with some of the scenes that happened there. And there's still people today you can hear online of giving these testimonies of children of remembering that day when people came in and killed their mothers and their fathers and things like that. It was terrible times. And then finally, bit by bit, these people poured in the late 1800s and then later in the 1920s and 30s into America.
And then finally, once again, when Hitler came in and made an advancement there, when Hitler got kicked back out from the Russians, a lot of these German people came back to Germany during that time into the tens of thousands now, even up into the 80s into the 90s came into Germany. So when we get to America, we'll talk to a little bit about how these people came to Canada. Their tenacity stayed with them.
They did some very impressive things for the protection of their children when they were in Canada, stood up for things against non-resistance. And yes, there were many scenes. I don't want to just say it was all great. They had some serious problems. What do you do with people in your area, particularly in that kind of a Russian area when they were disciplinary people or people were not converted and how to deal with that? And some of the scenes were very poor.
But I think I wanted to bring it a lot from their own words and hear some of the stories. And we can understand a little bit of the soul and the plight of the Russian Mennonites.