Hi, I'm David Bercot, and tonight we're going to be talking about the Anabaptists. This is the sixth message in the group of messages entitled" Kingdom Christians Through the Centuries." Now, the other five groups that we've been looking at through this series of messages are no longer with us as kingdom Christians. Some of them, like the Donatists, the Novatianists, and the Lollards, are not in existence anymore, period.
The so-called Nestorians, the Church of the East and the Waldensians, are still around today, but they've lost most of the aspects of Kingdom Christianity. So the Anabaptists are unique in that they are still with us today, and a very large percentage of them are still active kingdom Christians today. The Anabaptists are unique in another sense, in that the spiritual field that they grew in was different from that of the other kingdom groups.
The Donatists, the Novatianists, the so-called Nestorians, all of them sprung from primitive Christianity directly. They were part or remnants of the original primitive church. The Waldensians and the Lollards sprung from medieval Catholicism. In the case of the Lollards, that would be Catholicism heavily influenced by Augustinian theology. But unique of these six groups, the Anabaptists sprung out of the soil of the Reformation. So let's go now back to the 16th century, to the year 1517.
This was the year that Martin Luther nailed a list of 95 Theses on the door of the church in Wittenberg, or as we know it in English in Wittenberg. They're in Germany. Now these 95 theses were primarily challenging what had been being said about indulgences. They were not a set of Reformation doctrines, and Luther wasn't even remotely thinking about starting a new church or necessarily bringing about a major reform in the Catholic Church, theologically, at that point.
Nevertheless, his actions that day did strike the match. They lit the fire that ended up being the Reformation that engulfed nearly all of Europe, and radically changed the face of Western Christianity. Now at the same time that Luther was preaching Reformation theology in Germany, another Reformation movement burst out in Switzerland, unconnected with that of Luther. And the leading reformer in Switzerland was Ulrich Zwingli.
Now when I say that Zwingli started the Reformation in Switzerland, probably more exactly I should say in Zurich. Because at that time, Switzerland essentially consisted of a group of separate city-states known as Cantons. Now those Cantons are still there today, but Switzerland is more of a unified nation today. But in Zwingli's day, they were fairly separate city-states, and much of southern Germany was the same way.
Zwingli was the son of a Swiss magistrate, and he was a prominent patriot, as well as a humanist scholar, a preacher, and a statesman. He was also an ordained priest serving as a military chaplain for Swiss mercenaries who were fighting on behalf of the Pope. So as I said, he was already a public figure before the Reformation ever came about. And in the year 1519, he was appointed as the pastor of the Principal Church in Zurich, Switzerland.
Now when he accepted the position, Zwingli was not intending to start a Reformation. Nevertheless, in his preaching, he chose not to follow the interpretations of the medieval Catholic theologians. Rather, he followed his own interpretation of Scripture, which interpretations were heavily influenced by Augustine. Now because Zwingli was a popular public figure, the civil magistracy in Zurich did not oppose his preaching. He had a good working relationship with them.
In fact, they even ordered the other priests in the city to preach the Scriptures alone and to be silent about human additions. In other words, things that the Roman church had added, such as pilgrimages, things like that, that you don't find anywhere in the Scriptures. Now in the year 1522, Zwingli preached a sermon that demonstrated that the prohibition of eating meat during Lent had no foundation in Scripture.
Well, this touched off quite a storm that brought Zwingli in open conflict with the Roman Catholic Church, and it caused considerable commotion not just in Zurich, but all throughout Switzerland. So Zwingli asked the magistracy to call for a public debate on this issue of Lent, and the Magistrates agreed to that. Well, in the debate, Zwingli easily won over both the crowd and the magistrates. And so with the backing of the city magistrates, Zwingli began launching a major reform of the Church in Zurich.
Zwingli's goal was to reform the entire religious, the political, and the social life of all of the citizens based on the power of the scriptures, or at least based on how Zwingli interpreted those scriptures. Since all of the Swiss Roman Catholic bishops opposed the Reformation, the civil magistrates of Zurich stepped in and assumed the governing and jurisdictional rights that were formerly carried out by the Roman Catholic bishops.
In fact, getting a little ahead in the year 1525, the magistrates of Zurich confiscated all of the property formerly owned by the Church, and it itself began to control the education of the clergy. Meanwhile, back in the year 1523, Zwingli was continuing to attempt to bring about reform of the Church in Zurich. And so he began teaching against the practice of state collected tithes.
Now these tithes, which were also known as interest back then at that time, they were basically a state tax that were collected to support the church and the clergy. And there was no precedent in the New Testament for anything like that. And these state tithes were very burdensome on the poor because it was a straight percentage across the board, which affected the poor worse than the rich, because the poor were having to pay it out of their needs where the rich could pay it out of their excess.
So Zwingli was wanting the magistrates to end this practice of a state tithe, but they weren't willing to do that, so Zwingli dropped the subject. In the summer of 1523, Zwingli announced a plan to transform the Catholic mass into a more evangelical communion service as we would know one today. One of the things that he wanted done was to allow the cup to be directly given to the people.
Because at that time, and it had been that way for centuries and centuries in the Roman Catholic Church, the people were only given the bread. The priest alone and any other clergy drank from the cup, but not the laity. So he wanted to change that as one of the things. In fact, he notified the council in December of 1523 that he was going to go through with his plan of changing the mass on Christmas Day. But once again, the council said no.
And so he appealed to the council a second time, saying that he and the other preachers of the city would, and this is" stand condemned as liars before the Word of God" if they didn't go through with this change. But again, the council said no, we're not going to change it. So Zwingli withdrew his plan and agreed to abide by what the council determined. Well now a number of Zwingli's disciples were not at all satisfied with what they were seeing happening.
They said it shouldn't be the council who determines what Reformation takes place in the church. It should be the Scriptures alone. And they voiced these concerns to Zwingli. In fact, they said," You're the one who turned us to the Bible." I mean, they had been faithful Roman Catholics never questioning anything. Zwingli had turned them to the Bible, looked to see what the Bible says. Don't do anything that's contrary to the Scripture, so they were doing that. And they're saying," Now, wait a minute.
You're seeing things that are not in Scripture, and you're saying they should be changed, but then you're saying, no, we're not going to change them because the magistrates don't want it." Now two of these dissatisfied disciples were Conrad Grebel and Felix Manz. Both of them were educated men, not theologically educated, but had received a university more humanistic education. And more importantly, they were part of Zwingli's inner circle of friends and fellow reformers.
And these men stayed loyal to Zwingli at that time, but inwardly they were dissatisfied with what they were seeing because they were seeing that Zwingli would compromise rather than to stand up to the City Council. Well, over the next few months, this is still in the year 15, now 24, these disciples came to the conclusion that the root problem was the issue of what is the Church. Conrad Grebel expressed it this way, said," Zwingli put the Bible into our hands and encouraged us to study it.
We have followed his advice, but in reading the New Testament, we have discovered a different view of the Church than what Zwingli is teaching. You see, in Zurich, like the rest of so-called Christendom, every newborn infant was baptized and was thereafter considered a member of the Church.
And so statewide infant baptism meant that the population of any country, whether it was France, Zurich, one of the German states, the Italian states, wherever, the population of the country was one and the same as the membership of the church. There was no distinction between them. And it had been this way almost ever since the era of Constantine. Now there were a few exceptions.
I mean, the Jews were part of the population, but they were not part of the church, but they didn't enjoy all of the same rights as the other citizens of the state enjoyed. But Felix Manz, Conrad Grebel, and some of the other men, they saw that this isn't the biblical pattern. They said," No, the church is something called out of the world.
It's never one and the same as the society around it." And so they said," Well, only those who want to be disciples of Christ, not simply who want to have the name Christian, but who truly want to follow Christ, they should be the only ones who are baptized." And it would be then these baptized persons who would constitute the Church. It would be a believer's church of true disciples, rather than a statewide church. So the issue was not the theology of baptism per se, but rather the composition of the church.
But now theologically there was a conclusion that these men came to, and that was they rejected the Augustinian view that an infant who dies unbaptized is automatically damned. They said no, children come under the covering of their parents. They don't have to be baptized as infants in order to be saved. But again, it had been Zwingli that had led them to this view of infant baptism, that it wasn't an essential thing to do.
And so it may be better to wait and let people voluntarily choose baptism based upon a personal profession of faith. But once again, the council said," No, we're going to continue infant baptism that would be much too radical of a change." And Zwingli once again meekly complied with the council. Well, by now, and this had been happening over and over again, Felix Manz and the others now publicly began voicing their disapproval of Zwingli's compromises and on the issue of infant baptism.
That was not the central issue of these people. It just happened to be the issue that touched everything off. Alright, we're now in December of 1524. The Council has ordered Zwingli to meet with Felix Manz and these other dissatisfied disciples who were publicly talking against infant baptism. He was to persuade them to change their mind and, so to speak, get back with the group. Well, he had a couple of meetings with them, but he was unable to persuade them.
So in January of 1525, the Council of Zurich declared that any parents who refused to baptize their infants would be expelled from Zurich. And these dissenters, Felix, Manz, Conrad, Grebel and the others, were given one week to make up their minds. Either they were going to comply and have their children baptized, or they would leave Zurich.
So on the night of January 21st, the year 1525, Felix Manz and other men of similar mind met in the home of Felix and discussed this issue, and they decided they were not going to compromise. They would stand firm against the practice of statewide infant baptism. And it was during the course of this discussion that, rather spontaneously, they had not planned it ahead of time, they began to baptize one another, considering their earlier baptism as not being valid.
They were going to start a believer's church and they were going to begin it with voluntary baptism. And so that night, January 21st, 1525, can be considered the beginning, the decisive step in history of the Anabaptist movement. Well, when news got out about this secret meeting, the response of the council was quite swift. They immediately labeled these new disciples by the term Anabaptists, which means rebaptizers. And they quickly passed the following law. I'm reading from it.
It says," In order that the dangerous, wicked, turbulent, and seditious sect of the Anabaptist may be eradicated, we have thus decreed. If anyone is suspected of rebaptism, he is to be warned by the magistrates to leave the territory under penalty of the designated punishment. Every person is obliged to report those favorable to rebaptism. Whoever shall not comply with this ordinance is liable to punishment according to the sentence of the Magistracy.
Teachers of rebaptism, baptizing preachers, and leaders of cottage meetings are to be drowned. Those previously released from prison who have sworn to desist from such things shall incur the same penalty. Foreign Anabaptists are to be driven out. If they return, they shall be drowned. No one is allowed to secede from the state church and to absent himself from the holy supper. Whoever flees from one jurisdiction to another shall be banished or extradited upon demand.
So immediately these godly disciples were labeled as wicked and turbulent, seditious, and the council was ready to put them to death. And not even a particularly merciful death, but rather death by drowning. Which at least was better than what the Roman Catholics did who were still burning people at the stake. Now where did Zwingli stand on all of this? Could he go along with the council? These men were his former friends and supporters, his close disciples who had worked in his inner circle.
Did he speak out on their behalf? Did he try to mellow the response of the council? No, not at all. In fact, he wholeheartedly supported the council, and he encouraged the authorities to hunt down these Anabaptists and to arrest them and put them to death if they wouldn't change. Rather than recanting or keeping quiet, these first Anabaptists left the city of Zurich for the nearby village of Zollikon, which was under the governmental jurisdiction of Zurich.
So they were out of the immediate spot of danger, but they were still under the authority of the council, and their lives were at great risk. Well, at the village of Zollikon, they vigorously preached the Kingdom of God, the simple message of Jesus Christ. And the result was an enormous spiritual awakening in the village, and soon a free church was established there, the first Anabaptist congregation. Now these new disciples simply called themselves brethren.
The authorities were the ones who called them Anabaptists. They met in homes, generally at night in secret. And what is interesting is that they met three or four times a week. The love of God was so strong in them, they wanted to be together all of the time. There was really nothing else in life that compared to their newfound joy in Jesus Christ. And typically they shared communion every time they met together. So often it would be several times a week that they would hold communion.
About 10 years after these events, an Anabaptist wrote this about explaining to the Reformation Authorities why he had joined with them. He said," While yet in the National Church, we obtain much instruction from the writings of Luther, Zwingli and others concerning the Mass and other papal ceremonies that they are in vain. Yet we recognize a great lack as regards repentance, conversion, and the true Christian life. Upon these things, my mind was bent.
I waited and hoped for a year or two, since the minister had much to say about amendment of life, of giving to the poor, of loving one another, and abstaining from evil. But I could not close my eyes to the fact that the teaching which was preached and which was based on the Word of God was not carried out. No beginning was made toward true Christian living, and there was no unison in the teaching concerning the things that were necessary.
And although the mass and the images were finally abolished, true repentance and Christian love were not in evidence. Changes were made only as concerned external things. This gave me occasion to inquire further into these matters. Then God sent His messengers, Conrad Grebel, and others, with whom I conferred about the fundamental teaching of the apostles and the Christian life in practice. I found them to be men who had surrendered themselves to the doctrine of Christ by true repentance evidenced by fruits.
With their assistance, we established a congregation in which repentance was in evidence by newness of life in Christ. But Zwingli and the council would not tolerate this new congregation. So the city police of Zurich came down to Zollikon, and they immediately arrested any of the leaders they could, including Felix Manz and another leader, George Blaurock, who was in that original meeting back at Felix Manz' house.
They also arrested all of the newly baptized men of the village that they were able to get their hands on. And this effectively shut down the spiritual revival in Zollikon. Many of the ones who were arrested and faced with death, recanted and went back to the state church. Others fled the area, and they took the gospel with them. Very similar to the early Christians described in Acts. They're in Jerusalem. When the persecution forced them to leave Jerusalem, they spread Christianity everywhere they went.
And that's what these newly found disciples, the first Anabaptists did as well. And so the movement began spreading rapidly. In fact, very soon Zwingli and the civil authorities feared that the majority of the people would become Anabaptists. In fact, in one of his writings, Zwingli said that the struggle against Catholicism was, in his words," Child's Play" in comparison to the struggle against the Anabaptists. In other words, he feared the Anabaptist more than he did the Catholics.
And so under his direction, they threw the Anabaptists into bleak dungeons, fed them only bread and water, tortured them to make them recant their belief and to give them names of other Anabaptists. And if they wouldn't recant their" errors", they were bound with their hands tied behind them and then drowned in a river. But persecution didn't stop the Anabaptists. Instead, as we've said, it caused the movement to spread out very quickly.
Very soon in Germany and Austria, later in the Netherlands, more kingdom Christians sprung up. Some of these became Anabaptists from direct contact with the Swiss brethren. Other ones came to the same conclusions from their own reading of the Scriptures, because basically the foundational tenet of the Anabaptist was to literally follow what the Scriptures say.
So why don't we just take a moment right now and maybe look at some of the basic concepts of the Anabaptists, the tenets that they came to from a literal reading of the New Testament? Well, one of them, and a very distinguishing mark of the Anabaptists, was they believed that the essence of Christianity is discipleship. It's an obedient love relationship with Jesus Christ. And this begins with a new birth. But to them the new birth was not a matter of intellect. It was not a matter of theology.
It wasn't a doctrinal belief. In fact, it wasn't to them even a subjective experience. Rather, it was an objective reality that transforms a person's life. It can be witnessed by others. Now in contrast to this, you had the Roman Catholic view, which made the essence of Christianity essentially receiving grace through the sacraments under the authority of the Church.
And among the Reformed teachers, you had the essence of Christianity being personal salvation, believing in Jesus as your Savior apart from any kind of works, and that made you a genuine Christian. And so the Anabaptists were neither Catholic nor were they Protestant or Reformed. They had a third way, which is definitely the Kingdom way. It was the same conclusions the Waldensians had come to, the Donatists, Novatianists, the primitive Christians, what all kingdom Christians have believed through the centuries.
One of the early Anabaptist leaders, Menno Simons, where we get the name Mennonites, but we'll talk a little bit more about him later, he expressed it this way. He said," Now perhaps some may answer, our belief is that Christ is the Son of God, that His Word is truth, and that He purchased us with His blood and truth." We were regenerated in baptism, and we received the Holy Spirit. Therefore, we are the true Church and congregation of Christ.
To this, Menno Simons said," We reply," If your faith is as you say, why do you not do the things which He has commanded you in His Word?" His commandment is repent and keep the commandments. Faithful reader reflect that if it had so happened to you, as you say, you would have to acknowledge besides that the aforementioned birth and the received spirit are altogether without effect, without wisdom, power, and fruit in you. Yes, they are vain and dead.
You would have to admit that you live neither after the Spirit nor in the power of the new birth. I remember reading those words for the first time, which was about 18 years ago, and they really stuck with me. Because I saw in there the essence of what I believe is true Christianity, that you can set aside all of the doctrine, all of the theology, I don't mean permanently, but I mean for a moment, and just get down to the core reality.
There are a lot of professing Christians out there, and I'm not going to judge their standing with God. That's for him to decide. Who have all the doctrines down? I mean, they can say," Yes, I was born again. I accepted Jesus as my Savior and this or that. I'm a regenerated being. I'm a new creature."" Yeah, but how come then your life is not any different from that of the world?" Okay, yeah, it's different from the worst dregs of the world.
You're not out dealing drugs or robbing people or living with someone you're not married to. Yeah, you don't follow the worst things of the world, but you don't really differ from the standard of what's considered decent and moral by society at large. But see, it can't be that way if we are a new creature. Our life has to be different. It's not a matter of theology that," Oh, I have to believe I'm a new creature." Either you are a new creature, or you're not born again.
Now I don't mean that if you're born again, there's no failings in your life. There's not areas that you're struggling with, and that you still haven't maybe totally surrendered to Christ. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying you're absolutely perfect without any kind of sin. But I'm saying there has been a real transformation, not just in the case of those people who were really wicked in a worldly sense. Yes, they can really show a major transformation in their life.
But it should be in every Christian's life, from being a good, normal member of society, to being a citizen of a kingdom that is not of this world, that makes you different from this world, that makes you often hated by the world. Menno Simons had also written this, describing the type of faith that the kingdom gospel demands. He said," True evangelical faith cannot lie dormant. It clothes the naked. It feeds the hungry. It comforts the sorrowful. It shelters the destitute. It serves those who harm it.
It binds up that which is wounded. It has become all things to all men. Another Anabaptist leader expressed it. This was Hans Denck, a leader in southern Germany. He said," No man can truly know Christ unless he follows him in life." See, this was very different from what the Reformers were saying. They were saying it's a matter of theology if you believe Christ died for your sins and that you do not have to do any works. Boom, you are saved. You are eternally saved.
Nothing can happen to you after that that could take away your salvation. But that required no discipleship, no truly changed life, even though those things would have been preached. Paul put it another way. He said the Kingdom of God is not in Word, but in power. That's 1 Corinthians 4:20. In other words, the essence of kingdom citizenship isn't words, it's not theology. It's power. And if you read that passage in 1 Corinthians 4, you'll see that Paul is not talking about the power to perform miracles or wonders.
That's not what he's talking about. He's talking about the power to live the Christ's life. This power is given to you in the new birth. And if it hasn't been given to you, then evidently you were not born again. This is what the Anabaptists were saying. This is, I think, one of the core essences of the whole movement.
Now, as I've mentioned, this discipleship, this obedience to Christ, isn't limited to just those commandments of Christ that are fairly compatible with society around us, like giving up stealing and murder, and drunkenness, and adultery. I mean, most human society acknowledge those things are wrong.
I mean, they may carry them out, but hardly anybody in society would say," Yes, those are good moral things." But rather, discipleship to Christ includes the commandments of Jesus that truly separate His followers from the world and from worldly persons who profess to be Christians.
I'm referring to commandments like non-resistance, like loving our enemies, not accumulating treasures on earth, his strict teachings on divorce, on not taking oaths, the teaching in the New Testament that a Christian does not take his brother to court. It's obedience to these new commandments that Jesus gave and that were given through His apostles that distinguish an authentic Christian from a mere professing Christian. It distinguishes a Christian from the world.
And it was those revolutionary teachings that distinguished the Anabaptists from both the Catholics and from the Lutherans and Reformed churches. The interesting thing is that even the bitter enemies of the Anabaptists were forced to acknowledge that these were godly, holy people. And yet, since that didn't make sense, because they had to label them as wicked and all of that, the official position was," Oh, they appear to be godly and holy, but really they're evil, wicked people.
If they ever get in power, wait and see what will happen." And because the Anabaptists opposed the concept of a state church in that state and church were joined in human society, what is sometimes called corpus Christianum, that the other Reformers and the Roman Catholics alike viewed them as anarchists, that this is going to destroy everything, and so really they are evil people.
But like I say, even though inside they had to believe, they had to make themselves believe, no, these people are evil, yet they still had to admit openly that, yeah, outwardly, all we see is good that comes from them. Let me read to you just some sample quotations.
Zwingli personally wrote several works against the Anabaptists, and in his final work against them before his death, he said this:" If you investigate their life and conduct, it seems at first contact irreproachable, pious, unassuming, attractive, yes, above this world. Even those who are inclined to be critical will say that their lives are excellent." So he had to admit that, but inside he was saying," Yeah, but there's some evil that's there.
They appear to be this way, but they really aren't." Even though he could not pin them with anything that was ungodly other than their view of separation of church and state. Bullinger, who was the reformer who replaced Zwingli there in Zurich after his death, he wrote some very bitter works condemning the Anabaptists.
But even he was admitted to say this about the Swiss brother, and he said," Those who unite with them will by their ministers be received into their church by rebaptism and repentance and newness of life." They henceforth lead their lives under a semblance of a quiet spiritual conduct. They denounce covetousness, pride, profanity, lewd conversation, and immorality of the world, drinking and gluttony. In short, their hypocrisy is great and manifold. See, sometimes when you have nothing evil, you can pin on someone.
When all you see is good, you label them as hypocrites. Oh, well, they appear that way, but they really aren't. In fact, Bullinger lamented that people are running after them as though they were living saints. Another reformer, Vadian, who worked in the area known as St. Gall, he testified that none were more favorably inclined toward anabaptism and more easily entangled with it than those who were of pious and honorable disposition. I'll read to you a few more quotes. These are all coming from their enemies.
That's what's striking when your enemies have to say this about you. Capito, who was the reformer at Strasbourg, he wrote in the year 1527. And all these quotes I'm reading to you are very early. This isn't something written a century later, but this was by eyewitnesses who were contemporary with the first Anabaptist. Anyway, he said this about them:" I frankly confess that in most Anabaptists there is in evidence piety and consecration, and indeed a zeal which is beyond any suspicion of insincerity.
For what earthly advantage could they hope to win by enduring exile torture and unspeakable punishment of the flesh?" I testify before God that I cannot say that on account of a lack of wisdom, they are somewhat indifferent toward earthly things, but rather from divine motives.
In a letter, the ministers of the Canton of Bern, Switzerland, said," The Anabaptists have the semblance of outward piety to a far greater degree than we, and all the churches which unitedly with us confess Christ, and they avoid offensive sins which are very common among us." But you notice in each of these, the Reformer has to acknowledge their holiness and godliness, but it's always," Oh, it's a semblance." Well, it's hypocritical or something like that.
Another Reformed author wrote," Most of the Anabaptists are people who at first had been the best with us in promulgating the Word of God." The Roman Catholic theologian, Franz Agricola. He wrote this, and it's in a work called" Against the Terrible Errors of the Anabaptists." He said," Among the existing heretical sects, there is none which in appearance leads a more modest or pious life than the Anabaptist. As concerned their outward public life, they are irreproachable.
No lying, deception, swearing, strife, harsh language, no intemperate eating and drinking, no outward personal display is found among them. But humility, patience, uprightness, neatness, honesty, temperance, straightforwardness in such measure that one would suppose that they had the Holy Spirit of God. Of course, to this Catholic, well, that's out of the question. Of course they don't have it, but boy, you'd sure think it looking at them. But see, this was the whole essence of anabaptism.
It isn't this theological concept that I am holy, even though on the outside I appear to be ungodly, and you are ungodly, even though on the outside you appear holy because of what you do. I mean, that's twisted Christianity to think that way, but that's exactly how the Reformers thought, and how the Roman Catholics thought. These people have to be wrong because their theology is wrong. Therefore, they only have the semblance of being righteous and upright. And we only have the semblance of being wicked.
We're really godly people, because we hold to the right doctrine and belong to the right church. Let me read to you one more, Sebastian Franck. This was written in the year 1531. He says the Anabaptist soon gained a large following, drawing many sincere souls who had a zeal for God, for they taught nothing but love, faith, and the cross. They showed themselves humble, patient under much suffering. They broke bread with one another as an evidence of unity and love.
They helped each other faithfully and called each other brothers. They died as martyrs patiently and humbling enduring all persecution. In fact, the godly living of the Anabaptist was so noticeable to everybody else that any Christian who lived a godly, upright, holy life immediately fell under the suspicion of being an Anabaptist. It's exactly what had happened to the Waldensians. You may remember when we talked about them, this poor Catholic man who had been arrested under suspicion of being a Waldensian.
He said," I'm no Waldensian. I lie." Well, it was almost the same way here.
If you're truthful, if you leave this temperate, godly life, people immediately are going to suspect," Hmm, I wonder if this man is really secretly an Anabaptist." In fact, Casper Schwenkfeld, who was the leader of another movement, not Anabaptist, said this:" I am being maligned by both preachers and others with the charge of being an Anabaptist, even as all others who lead a true pious Christian life are now almost everywhere given this name." In fact, Bullinger, the one who replaced Zwingli and Zurich, he said
this, that there are those who in reality are not Anabaptists, but have a pronounced averseness to the sensuality and frivolity of the world, and therefore reprove sin and vice, and are consequently called or misnamed Anabaptist by petulant persons.
Now that is quite a testimony when your enemies have to admit that about you. But you know, it was exactly the same way with the early Christians. The Romans couldn't pin anything unholy, ungodly, unnatural on these persons. And so they made up all kinds of tales. Well, really, when they meet in secret, they're eating babies there. They're committing mass adultery and incest and things like that. They worship animals. Because they had to admit, boy, outwardly, these are our best citizens.
They're good, upright people, honest, hardworking. Everything a Roman should be. But there's got to be some kind of evil there beyond just their theology. And it was the same way with the Anabaptists. Now a second basic tenet or attribute of the Anabaptist movement was its belief in a voluntary church composed only of genuine born-again disciples, a church that is truly separate from the world.
Now today, that tenet would be held by nearly all Bible believing Christians, and so it might sound strange that why was that something unique about the Anabaptists? Well, you see, in their day, that was truly unique, because none of the Reformers believed in a voluntary church, and the Roman Catholic Church didn't believe in it either. By a voluntary church meaning one, that you as a believer decide to join instead of the church and the population of a given state being one and the same.
One of the side effects, you might say, of the Constantinian hybrid, is that it totally destroyed the worldview of the church versus the world. Because in the Constantinian hybrid, there was no church and the world. It was all one and the same. In fact, most of the Reformers, like the Roman Catholics, held to the view that the thousand-year reign of Christ had started either with Constantine or with one of the Roman rulers a few generations later. And that was the rule of Christ.
What most of us would look at as a rather horrible time, they thought that that was the millennium. And so to them, there was no world out there to have to watch out for, because the church was the entire population, with like the exception of Jews in some places, and perhaps in others you might have a few Muslims. But generally speaking, the population was identified with the Church. So this was very unique for the Anabaptists to say," No, there is a church, there is a world out there.
Everybody who's not truly reborn are part of the world." And therefore they initiated the whole concept of evangelism again. I mean, the early Christians had been, you know, very strong evangelists, and so had, even after the time of Constantine, you had very strong evangelism for several decades, although it was generally done by converting kings and then the entire population from that. But with the Reformers, there was no thought of going out and preaching in the villages, in the streets, in the marketplaces.
The Waldensians had done a bit of that. And you may remember from our discussion that the Reformers rebuked them on that. You know, a preacher should stay in his church. You don't go out on the streets preaching. Well, the Anabaptists went out on the streets in the marketplaces and to the farmhouses, and they evangelized the population, which is why it spread, the whole movement spread rather rapidly.
Now, as part of this concept of the Church, the Anabaptists insisted on a genuine brotherhood and a practical love among the members of the Church that included sharing their material possessions. I want to read to you just a few quotations about this. A visitor at a Swiss brethren baptismal service in the city of Strasbourg, this was in the year 1557, and this visitor was a Protestant. He was not an Anabaptist.
In his chronicle, he reported that the question that was addressed to all of those who were applying for baptism, or at least one of the questions was whether I'm quoting here," whether they, if necessity require it, would devote all their possessions to the service of the Brotherhood and would not fail any member that is in need if they were able to render aid." I mentioned previously Bullinger, who was the successor to Zwingli and Zurich, he said about the Anabaptists," They teach that every Christian is under
duty before God for motives of love to use, if need be, all his possessions to supply the necessities of life to any of the brethren who are in need." The Hutterians that we're going to be talking about in a few minutes, they went so far as to require communal ownership of all property, doing away with private property altogether within the Christian Brotherhood.
But most Anabaptists did not take it to that step, but there was expected a genuine sharing, not just pious thoughts about," Oh, I'll give my brother a little bit of money to help him here and there." You made your possessions available to Jesus Christ when you joined. Another aspect of anabaptism that went along with all of these things we've talked about was the theology of martyrdom. That it's normal for a Christian to be persecuted. You should expect it.
I mean, that's what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount." Blessed are you when you are persecuted." So, rather than fearing it, or wondering, well, what have we done wrong that this is happening, the Anabaptists were able to receive it, at least initially, with a considerable amount of joy that, wow, this is an earmark that we're on the right path.
And along with this theology of martyrdom, that true Christians will be the ones who suffer, they will not be the ones who persecute others, was that the way of Christ would be a narrow way that few would find. The Reformers and the Catholics alike had been afraid that the Anabaptists would end up taking over all of Europe, that they would become the majority movement.
But the Anabaptists themselves never thought that, because they knew that the way of suffering, and of self-sacrifice, and of truly giving oneself to Jesus Christ, was never going to be popular, that they would always be a minority, a narrow way. Now another tenet that distinguished the Anabaptists from the Reformers and from the Roman Catholics was their strong belief in a disciplined church. Discipline in the Lutheran Church was extremely lax, almost non-existence.
You did have a form of discipline in the Roman Catholic Church, but it normally turned upon confessing your sins to the priests and then carrying out the penance that He would put upon you to do, which was often a very mechanical thing, go and view certain images or relics, or say the rosary prayer, or something like that. Now, later in Calvin's Church, you did have strict discipline, but it was largely enforced by the civil authorities.
They made everybody in the town live a certain way or else face imprisonment, or whippings, or whatever else as a result. But the Anabaptists said," No, the only tools that are available to the church for discipline are reproof and, if necessary, the ban or disfellowshipping members." And they carried with them a strong belief that the members of the Church share with each other the responsibility of discipleship. It's not just a matter of you and Christ alone. It's a matter of the whole church.
If you sin, it's not just your own business, it's your brother's concern as well. Well before leaving the subject of the distinguishing tenets and practices of the Anabaptists, and maybe I should just repeat those again. We talked about radical discipleship, about a voluntary church composed of genuinely born-again members, of separation from the world, that the Church cannot be connected with the state.
We talked about the theology of the narrow way in martyrdom, of their view of evangelism, and also their view of a disciplined church, which did not characterize the churches of the Reformers, nor of those of the Catholics. Well, before leaving the subject of these distinguishing marks of the Anabaptist, it's important that we understand that the things I've described about the Anabaptist were not the fruit of some dead legalism, as some people imagined.
Well, they only did these things because all of these restrictions were put upon them by their church leaders. No people voluntarily took these responsibilities and obligations upon themselves. I want to read to you a passage written in the year 1542 from a chronicle kept by a Hutterian Anabaptist. And this appears at the close of the discussion of 2,173 brothers and sisters who had given their lives for the faith.
The chronicler wrote this:" No human being was able to take away out of their hearts what they had experienced such zealous lovers of God were they. The fire of God burned within them. They would die the bitterest death. Yes, they would die ten deaths rather than forsake the divine truth, which they had espoused. They had drunk of the waters which had flowed from God's sanctuary. Yes, the water of life. They realized that God helped them to bear the cross and to overcome the bitterness of death.
The fire of God burned within them. Their tent they had pitched not here upon earth, but in eternity. And of their faith they had a foundation and assurance. Their faith blossomed as the lily, their loyalty as a rose, their piety and sincerity as the flower of the garden of God. The angels of the Lord battled for them that they could not be deprived of the helmet of salvation. Therefore they bore all torture and agony without fear.
The things of this world they counted in their holy mind only as shadows, having the assurance of greater things. They were so drawn unto God that they knew nothing, sought nothing, desired nothing, loved nothing, but God alone. Therefore, they had more endurance in their suffering than their enemies in tormenting them.
The persecutors thought they could dampen and extinguish the fire of God, but the prisoners sang in their prisons and rejoice so that the enemies outside became much more fearful than the prisoners, and did not know what to do with them. Many were talked to in wonderful ways, often day and night.
They were argued with with great cunning and cleverness, with many sweet and smooth words by monks and priests, by doctors of theology, with much false testimony, with threats and scolding and mockery, yes, with lies and grievous slander against the Brotherhood. But none of these things moved them or made them falter.
From the shedding of such innocent blood arose Christians everywhere, brothers all, for all this persecution did not take place without fruit." Now, in this message, I don't have the time to be able to follow the history of the Mennonites in Europe. Maybe someday I'll be able to deliver another message on that. But I'll give you just a very brief overview. Most historians would look at three branches of Anabaptists in Europe.
You had the Swiss brethren that we've talked about the most, who also connected with Anabaptists in southern Germany. They planted churches or made converts in Germany. Plus, there were a number of German Christians who had come to the same conclusion as the Swiss brethren. Alright, then you had the Anabaptist in Moravia. They had fled there because of persecution.
Moravia allowed a bit more tolerance than other countries, particularly Austria, which was a very Catholic country, and the country that perhaps hunted down the Anabaptists the most vigorously and treated them the most cruelly. And so the Anabaptists in Austria nearly all fled to Moravia. Now, in this first period of anabaptism, all of the Anabaptists put a strong emphasis on being willing to lay out your possessions for all of the brethren.
And often this was necessary because people would lose their home and all of their possessions as a result of persecution or because of fleeing from persecution. In Moravia, the Anabaptists there took the next step of saying we're going to model ourselves after the Church in Jerusalem. It's described in the early part of Acts where they held all things in common. And one of their early leaders there in Moravia who emphasized this was named Jacob Hutter.
And over time, the Anabaptist Moravia came to be known as Hutterites. And they're still around today, but they've all migrated from Moravia and are in Canada and the United States, and they still hold all things in common. Now the third group was in the Netherlands, which again seems to have sprouted there somewhat independently of the Swiss brethren, although there were influences from evangelists from Germany, that is Anabaptist evangelists.
Now in the Netherlands, there was a Roman Catholic priest named Menno Simons who was sympathetic towards the Anabaptist there. And he saw that there was a good bit of confusion and inner struggling among them, some of them wanting to use violence to further their means, and others saying," No, we do this without the sword." Well, after about 11 years of watching and taking an interest in what they were doing, he resigned as a Roman Catholic priest and announced that he was joining the Anabaptists.
And he spent about one year just underground writing and meditating on the course of action he wanted to take. And at the end of that year, a delegation of Anabaptists came to him and asked them to be their leader. And he took on that task, and for 25 years, he led a life of being hunted continually and always having to stay one step ahead of the persecutors.
But he did so much in organizing and helping to establish anabaptism there in the Netherlands that thereafter those who had followed him, there were other Anabaptists in the Netherlands who were not connected with Menno Simons, but the ones who had worked under him came to be known as Menanis or later Mennonites. For the final section of this message, I want to talk about the Anabaptists in America and bring them up to the present day, the state of anabaptism today.
The first Anabaptist to settle in North America was a small group from the Netherlands who came in the year 1683 at the invitation of William Penn. Now, since one of the groups of Anabaptists in the Netherlands were often called Meninists after Menno Simons because they were part of the churches that he had helped to organize. That was the name that they were referred to in the deed by which they acquired land in Germantown, Pennsylvania to build their first church, and that was by the name Menonist.
Now later, other Anabaptists from the Swiss brethren groups came to Pennsylvania, and initially they attended that same church in Germantown. And so outsiders called them by the same name of Menonist or later Mennonite. Well, eventually that name stuck, and they all began calling themselves Mennonites as a way of distinguishing themselves from the Quakers, the brethren, the Dunkards, the Moravians, and other groups of Christians that were all there in Pennsylvania.
And so that's how they've come to all be known today as pretty much as Mennonites. Now for about a century before they came to America, most of the Anabaptists in Europe had been in what I would call a preservation mode. They had been horribly persecuted. Many of their leaders had been killed and imprisoned. And persecution had forced them to settle in areas where certain rulers were willing to grant them toleration, but it was usually on the condition that they didn't proselytize others.
Or often it was in a land where the people had different customs, a different language, and so they kind of kept to themselves and focused more inwardly. And so by the late 1600s, the primary focus of the Anabaptists of that day was on preserving the truth and the lifestyle that they had, rather than extending the gospel and trying to convert others to this same kind of kingdom Christianity. Now, I don't doubt that most of us would have done the same thing if we had been in their shoes.
The persecution that they had experienced was far worse than even what the early Christians had experienced under the pagan Romans. At least that persecution was sporadic, and generally Christians could move to another part of the same Roman Empire to escape the persecution, because most of it was localized. But the persecution of the Anabaptist wasn't sporadic. I mean, it was always there.
And it was hard for them to move anywhere because everybody, the Lutherans, the Reformed churches, the Roman Catholics, all were going to persecute them. So when the Anabaptists began to come to America, there was no longer that burning fire inside of them that had characterized the first generation and had made them want to spread the gospel of Christ's kingdom. They simply wanted a refuge where they could raise their families in peace and live out their spiritual convictions.
And so when the Great Awakening came to America in the early 1700s, the ones who responded to it were primarily Protestants, not Anabaptists. And these Protestants now, who had been awakened by these revival, they were the ones with hearts on fire, and the ones who wanted to go out and take the gospel to the whole world, rather than it being the Anabaptists who were wanting to do that.
And so when the Great Mission Movement started in the late 1700s and in the 1800s, it wasn't Anabaptists going out to foreign lands and bringing the gospel to people. It was evangelical Protestants who were doing this. Now, later in the 1800s, there were a whole second round of Protestant revivals under men like D.L. Moody. And that series of revivals is usually known today as the Second Great Awakening.
One of the innovations of the Second Great Awakening that came to nearly all Protestant churches was Sunday School. Well, in 1858, a man named John Funk, who had been a Sunday school worker with D.L. Moody in Chicago, became a convert to the Mennonites. And soon after he joined the Mennonites, he started the first successful Mennonite Church periodical called The Herald of Truth.
And he worked tirelessly to organize the various Mennonite churches in America to establish a general conference where they could all work together. And he also worked hard to introduce Sunday School into the Mennonite churches and to bring them doctrinally in line with the mainline evangelical Protestant churches. He was very successful in his efforts. He was assisted in time by two other leaders, John S. Kaufman and Daniel Kaufman.
Through the work of these three men, and many others like them, the essence of the Mennonite Church changed from being a pure Anabaptist body to essentially being a fundamentalist Protestant body that was coupled with the lifestyle convictions of the Anabaptists. New doctrinal statements were prepared in the late 1800s and early 1900s by the Mennonite Church, and these doctrinal statements were much more fundamentalists in nature than they were Anabaptist.
Church services were now modeled after evangelical Protestant services. New hymnals were introduced that contain few, if any, hymns written by Anabaptists. Now, not all of the American Anabaptists went along with these changes, and the ones who didn't formed what were called the Old Order Groups, and those groups are still with us today.
But the problem with the old order groups is that the only thing they had to offer as an alternative to the new blended Anabaptist slash fundamentalist Mennonite Church was that same model of let's preserve what we have, even though we no longer have that same original fire.
And so even though I personally lament the loss of the original Anabaptist ethos and theology, or at least a lot of it with the blending that took place with fundamentalism in the late 1800s, I think if I had lived at that time, and I was faced with those two choices, either staying with the old orders who had lost so much of their spiritual vitality, or joining the new blended Anabaptist churches with their newly found spiritual vigor, I think I would have gone to the blended churches.
Of course, what I wish is that there had been a third choice between either the old orders or the blended Anabaptist fundamentalist kind of churches, that a third choice had been there which would have been a return to the conviction and kingdom spirituality of the first generation Anabaptists. But no one was offering that choice. I don't even know how someone would recapture that same ethos. No doubt the old orders thought they were preserving the original Anabaptist ethos, but really they weren't.
Now they were certainly preserving a lot of Anabaptist aspects. But the original Anabaptists were fiery evangelists. But the old orders were not. In fact, they had almost completely lost any desire to try to evangelize others. The first generation of Anabaptists met three or four times a week. Some of the old orders were meeting only once every other Sunday. But more important than those two things, the early Anabaptists put enormous emphasis on the new birth.
Whereas many of the old orders weren't even talking about it, weren't even teaching that there was a necessity for a new birth in order to serve Jesus Christ and to be a member of His kingdom. The first Anabaptists burned with the love of God. And that's why they evangelized, and that's why they met so frequently, because they were on fire with God's love. And the whole Anabaptist movement had largely lost that love. And that's not something unique with them. Every movement goes through that same process.
It's very hard to keep that same first love as a movement is passed to the second and the third and the fourth generation. So the Anabaptists had done as well as any other group in that regard. But no one really had a plan of how do we get back to that first love. But they could see that there was vitality, there was spiritual zeal in the Protestant revivalist models, and that's why they turned to those models to regain some of their own lost spirituality.
Now my prayer is that someday there will be a third choice, and that would be a return to the Kingdom Ethos, the doctrinal beliefs, and the fiery zeal of the 1st Anabaptist. But I don't have a plan of how to do that. That's something God will have to bring about.
Yet I want to make it clear that even though a number of things have been lost over the centuries, and even though most Anabaptists today, or at least most Bible-believing Anabaptists, have adopted a fundamentalist belief system, I still see that the core of anabaptism, the kingdom lifestyle, is still very much alive today, and that's nearly 500 years after it began. And that is quite remarkable. No other Western Kingdom movement has ever lasted so long.
I mean, even the primitive Church didn't remain faithful to the Kingdom teachings for 500 years. They largely lost it after a little over 300 years. Likewise, the Waldensians lasted about 300 years before they lost their kingdom ethos. Now I also realize that those of us who don't come from an Anabaptist background find it very easy to sit back and point to all the various shortcomings of the Mennonite and Amish brethren groups of today.
The brethren movement was separate from the original Anabaptist movement, but had nearly the same belief system, and it's come along a very similar pattern. I think most of the seekers, our typical response is, well now they need to change this, and they need to change that. Boy, that rule is really stupid. What about this one? Can you believe that that's what they're requiring members to do? I think most of us have a lot of ideas of how we can improve what they have, or at least what we think would improve them.
But I think we should ask ourselves the question," Why are we non-Anabaptists even looking at the Mennonites and the Amish and the brethren in the first place?" If we're honest, I think we'll recognize the truth is that they are virtually the only ones around today who have preserved the kingdom teachings of Jesus in a fairly pure form. No other group is doing that. I'm not saying the Anabaptists are the only true Christians around today.
Rather, I'm saying that they're the only group of Bible-believing Christians that still teach and live Jesus' teachings on the Sermon on the Mount. Or at least they make a concerted effort to do so through the grace of God. And I think we should think about it for a moment. How many of us Christian seekers would take a firm stand for non-resistance if we didn't have today's Anabaptists around us as an example? Certainly some of us would, but I think a large number of us wouldn't.
How many of our sisters would have the courage to wear a head covering today if we didn't have the example of the Mennonites and brethren and Amish? I'm going to venture that a very small number would be willing to do something that would otherwise seem so strange in our society. How many of us would be concerned about modest dress if we didn't have the example of today's Anabaptist? Now, I think we seekers have a lot to be thankful for that the Anabaptists are still around.
I mean, after all, if we don't like their model of doing things, we don't have to join them. There's nothing stopping us from starting 21st century kingdom movements if God so permits. But most of us who have tried to plant new kingdom movements have found that even when we feel we have God's leading in it, it is no easy thing. It wasn't easy for the first Anabaptists.
They went through generations and generations of trials and divisions and working things out until they got a model that has worked now and stood up for century after century. At the same time, I think there are legitimate concerns and issues with today's Anabaptists. I think one is the danger of resting on their laurels. God has used them in a wonderful way, but He's also used other people and other groups in the past 500 years as well.
Another concern I have is a tendency I see in Anabaptist groups of what I'll call cliquishness. I see this in how members of one Mennonite conference will typically view or treat members of another conference, even when the differences between the conferences are rather slight, and certainly what they have in common far outweighs anything that they have that's different. And that same cliquishness sometimes will affect how Mennonites relate to Christians of a non-Mennonite background.
I think sometimes they forget that the first Anabaptists had all come from non-Anabaptist backgrounds. But today in many conservative Mennonite churches, people from non-Mennonite backgrounds are a decidedly very small minority, and often they do feel like outsiders. I appreciate that today's Mennonites and Amish and brethren, they don't want to risk losing what they've preserved for so many centuries in order to make it easier for Christians of non-Mennonite background to be able to join them.
It's a difficult balance there, but I think I understand and appreciate where they're coming from. But what I think would be wonderful would be a spirit of wanting to help new 21st century Anabaptist or kingdom groups get off the ground. Instead, often there's a spirit of," Well, if you don't want to join us, be off with you.
We're not going to help you." Of course, for such a spirit of cooperation to be possible between the original Anabaptists and New Kingdom groups of today, we seekers have to appreciate what our Mennonite brothers and sisters have preserved instead of denigrating them and seeing how many Mennonites that we can proselytize, leading them to leave a Mennonite church and come over and join our church instead.
So I think there needs to be a change of spirit on both sides, and again, my prayer is that someday that will happen. In conclusion, I would like to say that the purpose of these six messages on the kingdom movements through the centuries was not intended to be primarily a history lesson. I've given these messages in order to remind all of us that Kingdom Christianity, the Christianity that Jesus personally taught, can truly be lived out through the power of the Holy Spirit.
It has been lived out by Christians in every century since the time of Christ. So we today should ourselves be satisfied with nothing less than genuine, spirit-empowered kingdom Christianity.