Hi, I'm David Bercot, and tonight we're doing some more questions from our listeners. The question I'm going to be looking at tonight concerns pledges or vows made at the time of baptism to a specific church. Now, when I was baptized, I made a vow to give my life to Christ Jesus and to His Father. You know, those vows are immutable. They're, I think, a fine and good thing. But this is a different kind of vow. So let me read the question. It's a little bit long, but so just listen with me.
The person writes, "I was baptized as a believer in a very conservative Anabaptist setting." And the person doesn't mention the setting. I'm guessing Amish. It could be some kind of old-order Mennonite or something even different. This baptism included formal vows that include some pretty strong language about never leaving the church. This is widely interpreted as not leaving the denomination. The vows are given in a language that is poorly understood within the church, and I did not understand them at the time.
So that's what makes me think it is Amish, although it could be maybe an old-order Mennonite church that uses German or Pennsylvania Dutch. Probably it was High German, is my guess. A number of years after being baptized, I left that church. I struggled with the idea of going against my potential commitment. With that, there are things within that church that, to me, violate spiritual principles. For example, using a language in church not well understood by everyone.
Do you have any general advice or early church precedent for a situation like this? I have observed in the letters to the seven churches that individuals were called to repentance and obedience, but not to leave their church. Should that play into making church decisions today? Okay, so there are probably a number of our listeners who have been in this situation.
It wouldn't be common in most churches, but even outside of Anabaptist churches, there are certain denominations and sects that claim to be the one true church and that you make some kind of commitment that you're never going to leave that church. So how valid are those types of vows and commitments? Well, a vow is never absolute. As a general rule, as I said, if you give your life to Christ, then I think that is absolute. There would be no reason to ever violate that.
Or if you violate it, it's because you left Christ. But the vow itself is always going to be there. It's a requirement anyway to surrender our lives to Christ, whether you make a vow to that effect or not. But there's no example in Scripture of anyone making a pledge of allegiance or a vow of allegiance to a particular church or denomination. For one thing, in the New Testament, you didn't have any denominations. It was just one church.
It's the same way in the pre-Nicene church, with maybe one exception in the third century. But generally speaking, we're just talking about one church. So there'd be no vow to that church. It would be to the Church of Christ, the universal church, worldwide church. They didn't make vows to it, but I'm just saying that's where your loyalty stood and where it should always remain. It's to Christ's church.
We can never make a vow to a man-made denomination or congregation or sect that would somehow override our responsibilities to Christ. So our responsibilities to Christ are to obey all of His commandments, which include the Great Commission of witnessing, of trying to spread His kingdom.
And if we're in a church situation where that is very difficult to do, or where we're not growing spiritually, and it's having major effects on our relationship with Christ, then it's always right to leave and to go where we can better serve Christ. Now, as a general rule, in this case, I would look at the vow as more of a human promise. And as a rule, as Christians, or even as humans, we should keep our promises. If we've promised something to somebody, then we should do that.
Of course, we don't take oaths, but a promise is not an oath. You don't usually invoke the name of God or anything like that. So this basically was a promise being made to never leave that church, but that's a human promise. It doesn't, that isn't Christ's church. It may be, and I assume it is part of Christ's church, but our loyalty can never be to a branch of His church or a segment or division of it because His church wasn't supposed to be divided.
So we're all in sin, not that we can do anything personally about it, but the church as a whole is in sin in that it is so horribly divided. So the other thing that comes into play here that would be, you know, I'm an attorney by profession, is when you make a vow or a statement, you know, you affirm something that's in a language you don't understand or fully understand. That would, I can't think of any situation where that would be binding.
So in this case, let's just say, and I'm just guessing here, that your native tongue was Pennsylvania Dutch, and the vows were something written out that were in High German. And so you understood them to a degree, but not very well since that wasn't your native language, and nobody interpreted them to you into Pennsylvania Dutch. Maybe the whole thing was viewed somewhat as a formality. I don't know. So I don't think you need to feel guilty for leaving that church.
Now, I am friends with a lot of Amish people, a number of Amish churches in, like, Holmes County. And I'm familiar enough with the Amish to know there are many different kinds of Amish groups. It's not a uniform group. And of course, the Amish know that, but for those of you who aren't from Amish background, the Amish aren't a uniform, you know, monolithical group. There's different groups of Amish, and many of them, probably for the most part, all of them, don't have communion, intercommunion with one another.
They are completely separate churches within themselves. Now, they have good relations. I mean, they will work together on various projects across some of those lines, but now some groups probably wouldn't. So I am not, you know, slamming the Amish here, and I'm not encouraging people who are Amish to leave it, particularly if they're doing well spiritually.
And, you know, one of the ones I know in Holmes County, they seem to be prospering spiritually, and I certainly have, you know, no desire to tear down anything that they are doing. But I'm saying, but neither do they make requirements like this. They would expect somebody to remain within a kingdom church, within a church that is teaching non-resistance and the two kingdoms and many of the other distinctives that are set out in the Sermon on the Mount. But that should be true of all Christians.
And if you've grown up in a church that has a proper understanding of non-resistance and the two kingdoms, then I think it would be wrong to leave that, to leave that field of churches. But now, perhaps you're not doing well in this particular setting, and you can prosper spiritually in another Anabaptist church or kingdom church. And I think Jesus would certainly view that as a good reason.
I mean, even when you go back to the beginning of the Anabaptist movement, some of the original leaders, like Michael Sattler, Menno Simons, just name two that come off the top of my head, there were probably quite a few more. They were either Catholic priests who had taken a vow of celibacy, or they were monks who had taken a vow of celibacy. And they felt like, since they took those vows under improper pressure or improper understanding of Scripture, that those vows were not valid.
And I know both Menno Simons and Michael Sattler married. So, and I'm not discussing whether that was valid or not. I'm just saying we have the precedent in the Anabaptist world from the very beginning that church vows that are not something that are required in Scripture are not necessarily binding. I don't think we should take them lightly, on the other hand, but they don't overrule our allegiance to Jesus Christ. That always comes first.
And you were wondering, what about the letters to those churches in Revelation? Yeah, he doesn't tell them to leave. Well, there was only one church. I mean, these were part of Christ's church. He doesn't, you know, he doesn't say he removed their lampstand. He doesn't say, "I have thrown you out of my church." He just gave them some warnings, but they were part of his church, and there were people there, like you say, who he does command. And two of the seven churches, he has nothing negative to say about them.
And then the others, you know, would probably apply to almost every church today that, you know, you've lost your first love, some things like that. Several of the churches were influenced by a movement going through at that time called the Nicolaitans, and they taught some things, and they said it was okay to eat meat sacrificed to idols and to commit fornication. Well, I don't want to get into that. It's another subject on the Nicolaitans. But other than that, they were Orthodox in all of their other teachings.
Now, if the whole church, he didn't say that the whole church had become a Nicolaitan church. He just said that they were allowing them, they should throw those people out. So there was a weakness in their discipline there. But yes, when there was just one church, then the rule was you stay within the church. You don't leave and start a new church, a new sect. There was no other place you could go. Now, it would have been fine if somebody, let's say in Laodicea, felt like this church is spiritually weak.
I'm going to move and, you know, move to Smyrna or something like that, which is not very far away. That's where Polycarp was bishop, maybe at the time Revelation was written, maybe not. And it was one of the churches that received nothing but commendation. So yeah, I mean, it's always all right to make a physical move to a church, even in the same denomination, which is more spiritually alive.
Again, you can't apply Revelation when there was one church to a situation like today, where there are at least 42,000 different churches, denominations, sects, etc. A lot of those will claim to be the one true church. Some of them big, like the Roman Catholic or the Eastern Orthodox or the Coptic, and then some are rather small, maybe only consist of 200 people or something, and they claim to be the one true church.
That doesn't change the fact that they are a division in the body of Christ, that the body is not united, and we need to be part of a church where we can best walk in the historic faith, where we can be faithful to the teachings of Jesus Christ. And yeah, normally we can do that in an Anabaptist setting, but some people may feel there's a better option outside the Anabaptist. I myself attended Anabaptist church. I'm an elder in an Anabaptist church, and I certainly myself am glad to be in the Anabaptist world.
But none of us, as a general rule, we Anabaptists do not imagine we're the one true church. All right, so I hope that has answered your question, and also maybe for other people who are in a similar situation, you know, in conclusion, you don't need to feel guilty. I think you've made wise decisions to go where you can best serve Christ and in a church where you can understand what is being taught and where you can better witness to other people.
You know, hopefully you can still have good relations with the people back in your original church, but if not, then I think the onus of that lies on their head. Okay, thanks and God bless.
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