Hi, I'm David Bercot, and tonight we're going to be talking about the Waldensians. This is the fourth message in the series of kingdom Christians through the centuries.
I think we're all familiar with the account in Scripture about the rich young ruler who came up to Jesus and said," Good teacher, what good things shall I do that I may have eternal life?" And Jesus told him," If you want to be perfect, go sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come follow me." And as we all remember, the man went away very sad because he was quite rich. But have you ever wondered, what if he had said yes? Yes, teacher.
I'll give everything I have to the poor. I just want to follow you. What would have happened then? What role would he have played perhaps in helping to plant the church in the first century throughout the Roman world? What else would we perhaps read about him throughout the Gospels or the Book of Acts? Well, of course we don't know because that's speculation. He didn't say yes, he said no. But it's something that I've wondered about a lot.
Because I'm inclined to believe that Christ would have done some very great things through him if he had had the faith, if he could have seen the kingdom of laying down everything for the kingdom of God and doing what Jesus said. Because in the Middle Ages, there was another rich man who heard those same words of Jesus read to him," And this rich man said yes." And indeed, Christ did do great things through him. The man I'm speaking of was named Waldesius. Now that's the Latinized form of his name.
Sometimes I see it as Valdezius. You see, in Latin, there was only the letter V. There wasn't a V and a W. And we're not sure how the Romans said it, whether they pronounced it as a V or a W. And so throughout Europe, you'll see those two letters pronounced differently. In many languages, V is pronounced like in English we pronounce W and W is pronounced like a V. I took three years of Latin and the first instructor I had told us that in Latin V was pronounced like a W.
The word for road in Latin is via, VIA, which we pronounced as wea. But then the second instructor I had was a man from Belgium and he said no, you pronounce it like a V. So then we were all used to saying it as WEA. Now we had to say it as Via. Anyway, that's why you see his name is either Waldis or Waldesias, and I'm not sure how he pronounced it himself. That was a Latinized version of his name. Now in French, the French of his day, his name was Waldez or Valdez.
Now, probably many of you have read books that talk about the Waldensians and they might give the name of the founder as Peter Waldo. I've seen that quite a few times. However, there's no strong historical evidence for that name. You don't see that name until several centuries after he was dead. And a little later on in our account, I'm going to tell you probably why that name came to be. Anyway, Waldesius lived in the 1100s in the bustling medieval city of Lyon. That's in France.
Now Lyon was a major trade center, had been for many, many centuries, for over a millennium. In fact, it was an important city in the days of the Roman Empire. And those of you who've listened to my messages on the early Christians, you probably remember me talking about Irenaeus, who was a bishop in the city of Lyon, this very same city. Now, Waldesius was a wealthy merchant in Lyon, and he enjoyed being rich.
He wasn't a wicked man or anything, but he enjoyed living in luxury, and he loved being able to move within the power circles of the city. At the same time, he was a good Catholic. He went to Mass each week and did what a good Catholic was expected to do. But in the year 1170, something happened that changed his life forevermore. What happened in that year was that one day after Mass, Waldesius was walking back to his home, when he heard a minstrel singing a ballad about a fourth-century Christian named Alexis.
Now, Alexis, according to this tradition, was the son of a wealthy Roman senator, and he was a rich, spoiled pagan. However, on the day that Alexis was supposed to be married, Christ suddenly broke through to him in a dramatic manner. He was touched to his very soul by an extremely genuine conversion. And as a result, Alexis left everything. He told his intended bride about what had happened. She agreed to call off the marriage.
He left his family, his wealth, everything, and he traveled to the Middle East and ended up in this country of Syria. And there he spent most of his life simply praying, fasting, serving others, sharing the love of Jesus with everyone he came in contact with. He lived in extreme poverty and endured great suffering for the cause of Christ. Well, finally, years later, his health broken, his body disfigured, Alexis returned home to Rome. However, he looked so different, his own family and friends didn't recognize him.
He just seemed to them to be some bedraggled beggar. So Alexis decided that he would keep his identity a secret. He ended up accepting a menial job from his father, who didn't realize who he was, and he lived in this tiny little room under the staircase of his family's home. Now this wasn't just for a few weeks or a few months. He lived that way for 17 years, just doing the same kind of work he did in Syria, preaching to others, trying to serve others in the Spirit of Christ, fasting and praying.
And finally, one day this poor beggar died. And since he lived there under the stairs of this wealthy family, they went through his few meager belongings to see who he was, if there was someone they should notify. And there they found a diary among his few possessions. And they read through the diary, they realized who this was. This was their own son, Alexis, who had come back.
Well, Waldesius was greatly moved by this story, and it triggered a spiritual crisis within him, because in many ways he felt like I'm like Alexis was before his conversion. Troubled in his conscience, Waldesius went to his local priest for counsel, he poured out his soul to him, told him his concerns about having this great wealth, and was he really doing what he should for Christ? Well, he and the priest talked back and forth for several hours.
Finally, the priest got out the Bible and read to Waldesius chapter 19 of Matthew about the rich young man, usually we know him as the rich young ruler, even though I don't think the scriptures say that he was actually a ruler, but that's how he's come to be known.
Those final words of Jesus to this young man where he said," If you want to be perfect, go sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come, follow me." But when the priest read those words to Waldesius, Waldesius felt like he was standing right there in the shoes of that young rich man. And this is what Jesus was saying to him. We thank the priest for his counsel, and as he walked home, those words of Jesus kept ringing in his ears.
He played them over in his mind over and over. Well now his wealth was no longer a source of happiness to him. In fact, it seemed like this heavy chain around him. So in a moment of joy and spiritual delight, Waldesius suddenly decided he was going to throw this heavy chain off. He would be a disciple of Jesus. He would enjoy the delights of heavenly treasure. And he would give what he had to the poor, just like Jesus had told that other rich young man.
Well, first, Waldesius used some of his money to pay some scholars to translate parts of the New Testament into the common vernacular that was spoken there in southern France, known as Provençal. And then armed with the scriptures in hand, he gave everything else he owned to the poor. Well of course this attracted quite a large crowd. What was this man doing handing out treasures to people right and left? So as people assembled, Waldesius got up and preached to them.
He said," Citizens and friends, I'm not out of my mind, as you may think. I am freeing myself from the things that were oppressing me. For they made me a lover of money more than a lover of God. What I'm doing, I'm doing it for myself, and for you as well. For myself, that if ever again I possess anything, you may indeed call me a fool. For you, in order that you too may be led to put your hope in God and not in riches. Well, Waldesius went about the city of Lyon preaching this simple gospel message to everyone.
He went through the Scriptures, what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount, what Jesus taught in the other gospels, and that's the gospel of the kingdom, and that's what he shared with people. And his obvious earnestness and sincerity and his example of faith touched many lives. Now, before I go any further, I should explain that medieval Europe wasn't the spiritually dead society that many books would have you think.
Now, there were certainly major errors in the Roman Catholic system, particularly the role of Mary and the fact that religion had become mechanical for so many people. You go to mass, you get baptized automatically as an infant. You get confirmed automatically when you're age 12 or so, and you confess your sins to the priest, you go on pilgrimages, and it didn't require a living relationship with Christ. But that doesn't mean that nobody had a living relationship with Christ.
Because despite the errors of the Roman church, there were still many genuine Christians. And there was a very fertile soil there. It's called by secular historians the age of faith. I don't think if Waldesius was here today doing this and preaching that he would attract the following he got back then. Well what happened was soon a small group of like-minded believers gathered with Waldesius, and after a while they started calling themselves the poor in spirit.
They wanted to take every aspect of Jesus' teachings literally and seriously, what He taught about wealth, what He taught about non-resistance, about loving your neighbor, all of those things. Because they wanted to taste the joy of true, uncompromising discipleship for themselves. What had happened is that the kingdom of God had reached Lyon, and it was turning the city upside down, just as it had done back in the days of the apostles.
Now, neither Waldesius nor any of his followers had any desire or any vision to form a new church. In fact, they had no desire to even challenge or to attack the Roman Catholic Church. They saw themselves as good Catholics in that they were doing something on behalf of the church. They just wanted to live out authentic Christianity, and they wanted to do it within the fold of the Roman Catholic Church. And they wanted to share their newfound joy with other people. They had no new doctrines to offer to anybody.
They simply preached word for word what the Scripture said. And although there were some wealthy people and some intellectuals who joined this movement, by and far the poor in spirit came predominantly from those who were literally poor and from the uneducated masses. Now the poor in spirit could have easily become a spiritual society within the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, a contemporary of Waldesius was Francis of Assisi, and that's exactly what he did over in Italy.
But Waldesius had a couple of convictions that became problems, first of all, he didn't seek the permission of the church for what he was doing. Secondly, he had no intention of hibernating in monastic seclusion. He wished to remain an ordinary citizen of Lyon, taking this message of Jesus Christ to the churches, to the public squares, and to the marketplaces.
One of Waldes' early followers wrote this, he said," The decision we have taken is this: To maintain until our death faith in God and in the Church's sacraments, we have decided to preach freely according to the grace given to us by God. This we will not cease to do for any cause." So belittling the doctrines of the church or challenging the authority of the church were the furthest things from the minds of the poor in spirit. In fact, they were encouraging their listeners to attend church more faithfully.
So they thought, well, how could the church possibly object to what we're doing? We are good Catholics and we are helping other people to become better Catholics. Well, before long, Waldesius and the poor in spirit were awakened from their spiritual naivety. Of course, the Catholic Church had no objections to the lifestyle of the poor in spirit. The church viewed them as simply following the way of the perfect.
Because way back ever since the time of Constantine, the Catholic Church had taught, if you want to be perfect, yes. Give all you have to the poor, live a life of poverty and all this the way the monks and nuns were doing. The church encouraged that. They said it was a good thing, but it wasn't something necessary in order to be an authentic Christian. It isn't something Christ required of an ordinary Christian. It was only required if you wanted to be perfect.
And they used the sense perfect, not in the original meaning of if you want to be complete, but rather if you want to do more than what is ordinary, more than what is required. So the Catholic Church saw that it was a good thing the poor and spirit were doing. It wasn't necessary, but it was good. The church had no objections to their doctrines because they didn't have any different doctrines in the church.
But the archbishop wasn't comfortable with the fact that the poor in spirit, who had not been trained at any university, had not been ordained by the church, that they were out preaching on the streets. Because ever since the time of Constantine, the church had tried to maintain a monopoly on preaching. Because one of the characteristics of the hybrid state church was its belief that only those who were licensed by the institutional church could safely preach the gospel.
So the archbishop, being a bit angry, ordered Waldesius to appear before him. He then demanded that Waldesius and the poor in spirit stop preaching at once, and he sternly reprimanded Waldesius. He said," Preaching belongs to the clergy. It is not for laypeople to take it upon themselves to do." Well, what would Waldesius do? The lives of thousands hung in the balance right now.
He could have played the part of a good Catholic and said," Yes, your holiness, whatever you direct." He and the poor in spirit could have continued to live a kingdom lifestyle as a religious order under the authority of the Church, and I'm sure they would have attracted a lot of new disciples and would have had a worthwhile ministry.
But Waldesius would not agree to quit preaching, instead to the utter shock of the archbishop, he looked him squarely in the eye and said," On the contrary, preaching belongs to everyone who chooses truly to live like the apostles of Jesus." That was a momentous response. Because there was a lot more at stake than just the issue of preaching. What Waldesius was seeing was that the essence of Christianity is this personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Now, I don't mean the kind that's just become a cliche today.
Everybody uses that expression in evangelical circles, whether they walk with Christ or not. You see, everyone else in his day, or I should say practically everyone else, saw Christianity as something that worked through the institution of the church. It wasn't a direct relationship with Jesus Christ. It was a relationship to Jesus, but through the church, and usually through Mary or one of the saints, there were all of these intermediaries in between. And the Bible meant whatever the church said that it meant.
See, here Waldesius was seeing the very thing that so many of us non-Catholics see is that what the Scriptures say is our ultimate authority, not what the church says. It doesn't mean we dishonor the church, we try to live within the framework of the church or a church. But in the end, it's what Jesus says, and we're going to have to stand before Him individually on Judgment Day. It won't be as a church. It'll be as me, David Bercot, or as Joe Smith, or whatever.
And so if the church tells us to do something that directly contradicts what Jesus said, we do what Jesus said. Now, of course, Waldesius didn't articulate all of these things, many of these things weren't articulated until the Reformation. But then it was in a very different context. It really wasn't in the context of living literally by Jesus' teachings. It was saying we have to go by the Bible, but it was the same old story. The Bible means what we university educated men say it means.
And the Reformers were just like the Roman Catholic Church. It's not up to laypeople to go out and preach the gospel, certainly not in the streets. Well, back to our story. Needless to say, Waldesius had raised the ire of the archbishop, and he had put himself in a very dangerous position. Today, if you did something like this, maybe you'd have an archbishop mad at you. Back then it meant you might be burned at the stake. But Waldesius still had this naive confidence, this is Christ's Church.
If this Archbishop doesn't see what Jesus is seeing, I'll go to the Pope. In fact, at that very moment, the Third Lateran Council was in session there in Rome. So Waldesius thought to himself," Well, me and some of the other fellas, we'll just walk on down to Rome." It wasn't that far from southern France, and we'll ask the Pope himself, get his approval. So they did that very thing. In fact, this was a very similar thing that Francis had done, but the pope had put Francis under the protection of the Church.
But again, Francis was willing to become just a religious order, rather than to be preaching the need of everybody to follow the Scriptures, regardless of what the Church said. Well, the Pope received Waldesius very cordially, and he looked at their scripture translation that they were using. He expressed approval of it, said it was very good. But he told them that any decision about preaching would have to be made by their local bishop. In other words, he wasn't going to step in to help the poor in spirit.
Well one of the delegates at this Lateran Council decided he would find out just how qualified these poor in spirit were to go out and preach to others. He was a very haughty, educated monk from England. His name is Walter Map. So this Walter Map called for the poor in spirit to appear in front of him and a number of the other delegates there at the council. And he decided he would test them by asking him some questions.
He said," Tell me, do you believe in God the Father?" Well, Waldesius and the others said, well, yes we do. And in the Son? Yes, we do. And in the Holy Spirit? Yes, we do. And in the Mother of Christ. Yes, we do. Well, at that last answer, everyone started laughing. Well, Waldesius and his disciples with him looked at each other and said, what did we say wrong? Well, everyone was laughing and shouting at them and shoved them out of the council. They were still confused. What had we done?
Walter Map wrote an account of this later, and he said this. At this last response, a roar of derision went up, and they withdrew confused. And rightly so, because they had no one to guide them, and yet these same people expect to lead others. See, this was the spirit of the institutional church. Oh, if you haven't studied at our seminaries or our universities, and you don't know all these fine points of theology, well, you have no business out preaching to others.
Well see, the problem was, Waldesius and the poor in spirit, they did know the Scriptures. They had said nothing wrong. What they didn't know were the various church councils and the pronouncements they had made. And at the Council of Ephesus, Mary had been given the title" Mother of God." And so to say," Do you believe in the Mother of Christ," which is certainly no scriptural objection to that, we'll see that was theologically wrong and showed that they were uneducated.
And as Walter Map just dismissed them, all these poor untrained people, they're confused, they don't know what's what. Well, they did know what's what. It was the church that didn't know up from down. Well, when Waldesius and his fellow Christians returned to Lyon, they continued to preach out there in the marketplaces just as they had done before. They went out of their way to explain to all of the church authorities that they were not heretics. They had no new doctrines.
In fact, they even preached against some of the heretics of their day, like the Cathari, who had a gnostic type of doctrine that they were preaching. In fact, when a papal representative brought Waldesius a written declaration of adherence to the Catholic faith, he agreed to sign it. He read it over, and he made one small handwritten notation, and then signed it. His notation was this.
He said that his call to a life of poverty came as an act of obedience to Jesus Christ, not as an act of perfection on behalf of the church. That was a very big distinction, and it was at the heart of this whole matter, at the heart of what I call kingdom Christianity. This matter that I do something because Jesus Christ says I'm to do it, not because the church tells me to do it.
It doesn't mean that we don't obey the church when it's in harmony with the gospel, or that we have a rebellious spirit, but that our ultimate authority is Jesus and what he says in the Scriptures. It's not the church and it's not theologians and universities and seminaries and that sort of thing.
Well, despite the fact that Waldesius had signed this Declaration of Faith with just that one notation, the church authorities weren't completely satisfied, so they commanded Waldesius and the poor in spirit to appear before them again. And once again, the clergy firmly ordered them that they were not to preach anymore. In reply, Waldesius quoted by memory to them the words of Peter when the Jewish authorities had told him to quit preaching.
Waldesius said," Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you more than to God, you judge, for we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard." This is how strong his commitment was that what we feel is a commandment from Jesus Christ, we're going to follow. We're going to be obedient to Him, regardless of what even the church might say.
Now, because he gave this reply, the same reply that Peter had given, a lot of historians think that's where centuries later, people started remembering him by the name Peter Waldesius or Peter Waldo. That wasn't his actual name, but because he had taken that stand of Peter, that somebody had given him that nickname later on after he died. And then eventually a lot of different records were referring to him as Peter Waldo. Well, as you can imagine, when Waldesius had told him that, the clergy were furious.
And so they immediately called for the civil authorities to come in, and they permanently banished Waldesius and the poor in spirit from Lyon. In other words, they had the soldiers and the civil authorities just ride them completely out of town and told never to come back. But this didn't dampen the zeal of these kingdom preachers in the least. Like the apostles, they rejoiced that they were being persecuted in the name of Christ.
So now they traveled all throughout southern France, preaching the gospel of the kingdom in the streets and marketplaces wherever they went. They wrote tracts, they organized public debates, and yet they still spoke very favorably of the Catholic Church. Well, before long, the poor in spirit, I'm going to refer to them as the Waldensians, even though at this point they weren't called that. They met some of the disciples of two other preachers like themselves.
One was Pierre de Bruys, and the other one was Henri of Lausanne. Now, Waldesius could plainly see that these two other similar preachers weren't heretics, they were, in fact, good Catholics, again, just preaching for reform in the church and preaching a message that was essentially the same as that of Jesus Christ, the gospel of the kingdom. Now these two leaders, I've spoke of Pierre and Henri, they were both dead by this time. It was their disciples that Waldesius ran into.
But now what was different about these people is that they were attacking Rome for its worldliness, its wealth, and its acquisition of worldly power. And they were pointing out that the veneration of images and prayers for the dead were unscriptural. Well see, up to that point, Waldesius had never questioned any of those things. He thought the Catholic Church was right on, and he couldn't understand why they wouldn't let him preach.
But see, these other disciples who were also good Catholics, they were seeing that there were some serious sins, some serious errors in the Roman Catholic Church. Well, as I said, this was all new to Waldesius and his disciples, but they were sincere Bible students, so they gun out their scriptures and they read through them, and soon they realized, well, these criticisms are correct. There's nothing in the Bible about venerating images or praying for the dead.
The Bible doesn't teach that the church should acquire worldly power. So now they too began to speak out about the errors and sins of the Catholic Church. Well, the Catholic Church was very quick in its response. In the year 1184, this is just a little over a decade after Waldesius had started his preaching, the Council of Verona condemned the Waldensians as dangerous schismatics. Now, that was a step short of calling them heretics.
It was saying, okay, they're still Orthodox Catholics, but they're Schismatics because they're breaking from the church. Well, the same Walter Map, who had belittled them years earlier with his trick questions, he had a hand in this condemnation as well, because he wrote," These people have no settled dwellings, but they go around two by two, barefoot and dressed in wool tunics. They own nothing, sharing everything in common after the manner of the apostles. Naked, they follow a naked Christ.
Their beginnings are humble to the extreme, for they have not yet much of a following. However, if we should leave them to their devices, they will end up turning all of us out. You know, this is just like it was with the Jewish authorities and later with the Roman authorities. People were afraid that the meek and lowly disciples of Jesus Christ would turn the world upside down. Well, finally, in the year 1190, the Church condemned the Waldensians as heretics, making them subject to ruthless suppression and death.
Well, undaunted by the fact that the church had declared them to be heretics, Waldesius and his disciples continued to travel throughout southern France, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, only now they had to stay one step ahead of the authorities. Later they crossed the Alps over into Italy, to the area that's known as Lombardy. And here they encountered a group known as the Lombard Poor. They were another kingdom movement similar to the Waldensians who had started maybe a few years before them there in Italy.
And the Lombard poor and the Waldensians saw that they had an awful lot in common and that they were good for each other. The Lombard poor had their own insights and they helped the Waldensians to see that the church should have no connection at all with the state. Those are two different institutions. In turn, the zeal and the spirit of the Waldensians proved to be a very refreshing stimulant to the Lombard poor, who were in a period of slowing down. So the poor of Lombard agreed to join the Waldensians.
And it was a good merger because the Waldensians brought to the combined movement a strong witnessing zeal. In turn, the Lombard poor brought to the movement the stability of community. They had lived in community somewhat similar to the Catholics, but as married families. And together, these two groups coming together produce quite a revolutionary force to be reckoned with.
Not a revolutionary force with swords and that sort of thing, but armed just with the Word of God, they certainly did turn the world upside down, not in a physical way, but spiritually. Now it wasn't too long after the two groups joined that Waldesius died. Now, some of the Waldensians weren't comfortable with the direction the movement was going. As I had mentioned, Waldesius had never intended to break from the Catholic Church to start another church or anything like that.
And he himself didn't approve some of the directions the movement was going as a result of the influence from the Lombard poor. And after he died, some of the Waldensians, some of the French ones, ended up going back into the Roman Catholic Church and starting a religious society and living under the church that way. But most of them continued on. And Waldesius' death did not have any detrimental effect in the movement, because they were following Jesus Christ, they weren't following Waldesius.
He happened to be the one who lit the match to get things going. Well now they turn more and more to trying to understand what went wrong with the church, and they began studying the Christian history that was available, and they correctly saw that the turning point happened during the time of Constantine. And so the Waldensians began saying, OK, you can divide the history of the church into two parts. The first period, which was the pre-Constantinian church, was the time of the faithful witness of the church.
And beginning at the time of Constantine, you have the period of betrayal. Well, did this mean that then all true Christians disappeared with Constantine? Well, some groups had thought that, but the Waldensians said no. They believed that the poison that was injected into the system of the church didn't necessarily reach down to every single member of the body of Christ. They said there's always been a faithful remnant who have persevered even down to their very day.
The light of the kingdom had never been extinguished, it had only been dimmed. And so during these years the Waldensians came to a clear understanding of what's sometimes called the doctrine of the two kingdoms, that a Christian can either give his ultimate allegiance to the kingdoms of the world, or he can give it to the kingdom of God. But we can't give it to both. So we must choose one or the other and the Waldensians chose the Kingdom of God. Now I want to talk a few moments about what the Waldensians believed.
They had no complicated theological system. Their belief system was basically a literal application of the teachings of Jesus. They did believe and teach that we humans are capable of making choices. We do have free will and we're responsible for the choices that we make. And so if we want to be a Christian, we must make the decision to live by the teachings of Christ, and then we have to be faithful to that decision.
As one of them said," No one can be a true Christian if he has not truly surrendered his life to the Lordship of Christ." Now see, this is a little different than the popular gospel of today, which is to ask Jesus into your heart. See, this was you surrendering your life, not to just Jesus as your Savior, but to Him as your Lord. And they accurately saw that Jesus' teachings were revolutionary. And they also recognized that Jesus intended for His teachings to be lived literally by His disciples.
So they taught against the accumulation of wealth. They taught against using the sword for self-defense or using the sword in war. They refused to take oaths because Jesus said," Do not swear." And that was quite a big step because medieval society turned so much on the use of the oath. You see, the whole feudal system was based on these oaths of allegiance. You had a king perhaps, and then you had a number of nobles who took an oath of allegiance to that king. And then each of those, we'll call them major nobles.
Then there were lesser nobles, vassals under them, who likewise gave them an oath of loyalty or fealty. And it went on down the chain. So to refuse to take oaths was challenging the whole medieval societal arrangement, which arrangement, of course, was directly contrary to Jesus' teachings. And it wasn't just a matter of not taking oaths, it was a matter of being true to your word. In fact, Waldensians became quite well known for their honesty.
So much so that some poor Catholic man who had been suspected of being a Waldensian, when he was taken before the Inquisitors, he said this," I'm not who you think I am. I lie. I'm a good Catholic." In other words, the fact that you lied would indicate," No, you're not really a Waldensian." Now we do have a little bit of writings from the Waldensians or more often writings from Roman Catholics concerning the Waldensians that reveal a little bit about their belief system.
I'm going to read to you first from an Inquisitor's report. This dates back to the year 1320. And it's describing what the Waldensians did on what Roman Catholics would know as Holy Thursday or Maundy Thursday. This would be the Thursday preceding Easter. This is what the Inquisitor wrote. He says," He said that after nine o'clock, when the supper has been prepared, it is the leader who washes the feet of his companions and dries them with a towel which he wears as an apron.
Having done this, the leader sits at the table with the others. Then taking the bread, fish, and wine, he blesses them, not as an offering or sacrifice, but as a remembrance of the first supper. In so doing, he pronounces the following prayer:" O Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and God of our fathers, and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has commanded that in many places and by the hands of the bishops and priests, your servants' offerings and sacrifices should be made unto you.
May Jesus Christ, who blessed the five barley loaves and two fishes in the desert, and who turned water into wine, bless in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, this bread, this fish, and this wine, not as a sacrifice and offering, but as a simple commemoration of the Most Holy Supper which Jesus Christ our Lord instituted with His disciples. Lord, I am not worthy to offer with impure hands such a precious gift, nor are my impure lips worthy to receive the most holy body of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Merciful Father, we ask you nonetheless to bless the substance of this bread and this wine in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. Now again, this isn't describing a weekly service. This was once a year on Holy Thursday, Maundy, Thursday, when it was the Roman Catholic practice at church for the priest or others to wash the feet of their brethren.
From what is said there, it sounds like they did in a sense have a belief in the real presence of Jesus Christ in communion, but not as a sacrifice, and not as something to be worshipped as was done in the Roman Catholic Church. Now this next one, and it's the only other one I have, is an actual Waldensian writing that dates back to sometime in the 1400s. And it reveals quite a bit about what they believed. It says it's called usually the noble lesson because that's how it starts off.
It says," Sisters and brothers, give ear to a noble lesson. We ought always to watch and pray, for the world is nearing the end." We ought to strive to do good works, for the world is nearing the end. 1,100 years are fully accomplished since the coming of the last days was set. We must desire little for we are at the very end. We see the signs of the end every day, the increase of evil and the decrease of good. These are the perils of which Scripture speaks. The Gospels and St.
Paul:" No one can know when the end shall be. Therefore we ought the more to be vigilant, not knowing if death shall seize us today or tomorrow. But when Jesus shall come at the day of judgment, all shall receive full payment. Those who shall have done ill or done well. But Scripture affirms and we ought so to believe that all of the worlds shall pass two ways: the good shall go to glory and the wicked to torment. And any that shall not believe this should search the Scriptures from the beginning.
Since Adam was formed until the present time, the reader shall find, if he or she has understanding, that few are saved. But every person who would do good will honor God the Father above all else, and invoke the help of His glorious Son, the Son of Saint Mary, and of the Holy Spirit who leads us in the way. These three, the Holy Trinity, one God, are to be invoked, full of power, of wisdom, and of goodness.
To this God we must pray without ceasing, that God give us strength against our enemies, to overcome them before our end. And speaking of these enemies, it says," They are the world, the devil, and the flesh." God give us wisdom accompanied with goodness, that we may know the way of truth, keeping pure that Spirit which God has given us, the Spirit and body in the way of love.
Now after the apostles, there were certain teachers who taught the way of Christ our Savior, and who are found even to this day, known to very few, who would show the way of Jesus Christ. They are so persecuted that they are able to do but little. Many are the false Christians blinded with error, who persecute and hate those who are good, and let those live quietly who are false deceivers. But by this we may know that they are not good pastors, for they love not the sheep, but only the wool.
Scripture says, and we know it to be true, that if anyone is good, loving Jesus Christ, that person will neither curse, nor swear, nor lie, will neither commit adultery, nor kill, nor steal, nor be avenged over the enemy. Now such a person is called a Waldensian and worthy to be punished, and they find occasion by lies and deceit to take from him that which he has gotten by his just labor.
One that is thus persecuted for the sake of the Lord takes courage in this, that the kingdom of heaven shall be inherited at death. This I dare say, and it is very true, that all the popes from Sylvester On, the cardinals, bishops, abbots, and the like, have no power to absolve or pardon any creature, so much as one mortal sin. It is God alone who pardons and no other. This is what pastors ought to do: preach to the people and pray with them and feed them with the teaching from on high.
May the Lord who made the earth number us to dwell in his house forever. That's the end of that short tract called the Noble Lesson. The Waldensians were ardent students of the Bible, and over time they eliminated virtually all aspects of the Roman Catholic faith that could not be found in the New Testament.
Even though they had started off just as good Catholics, they eventually taught against such unscriptural practices and doctrines as purgatory, masses for the dead, intercessions of Mary and the saints, veneration and worship of images, crosses of the mass or Eucharist, and also the supposed sacerdotal power of priests. Now I want to address some of the common myths about the Waldensians.
Probably the biggest myth is that so many groups today with widely varying beliefs all claim the Waldensians as their spiritual ancestors. For example, most evangelical groups do. Yet I just read to you from their tract The Noble Lesson and the theology of that tract is the exact opposite of what evangelicals and fundamentalists believe.
You read nothing in there or heard nothing in there about salvation based on faith alone, that obedience plays no role in our salvation, that you can't do anything good, et cetera, et cetera. Their belief was what would be called today a works theology. If modern evangelicals were honest, they'd have to say those people were unsaved. They weren't even Christians. They were trusting in their works. Well, they weren't trusting in their works.
They were trusting in their obedience to Jesus Christ and His grace, which would be given to those who loved Him. And Jesus had said," If you love me, you will keep my commandments." So they were not ancestors at all to the modern-day evangelicals, to any of the churches that came out of the Reformation that is from Luther or Calvin or Zwingli. Other groups like Jehovah's Witnesses claim them as ancestors.
But again, you probably noticed when I read to you from that tract, The Noble Lesson, they believed in the Trinity. So they were obviously not anything like Jehovah's Witnesses. Really, the only people who can legitimately claim the Waldensians as their spiritual ancestors would be what I call kingdom Christians, people who believe the simple gospel of Jesus Christ. That we must live by His teachings.
Not perfectly, not that we earn our salvation by doing that, but as evidence that we truly believe and trust in Him as our Lord, not just as our personal Savior. Now a second myth about the Waldensians is that they were around ever since the time of the apostles. Or sometimes the myth is that they were around ever since the time of Constantine.
That once Constantine formed the Roman Catholic Church, which is a little bit of a myth in itself, that there were these Christians who stood up and said," No, we're not going to go along with this." And these were the Waldensians. I mean, they weren't called Waldensians then. It was much later when they were called that, but they existed long before this man Waldesius. In fact, during the 1400s, the Waldensians themselves were making this claim.
But they were largely uneducated people, and they had no historical evidence for that claim. It was a nice belief, just like, again, people today saying the Waldensians were their ancestors when they don't have any evidence to indicate that. They don't really know what the Waldensians believed. It's just a popular belief that fits their system. In fact, the whole claim was based on another myth, and that was the historical fallacy concerning the donation of Constantine.
There was a forged instrument produced during the Middle Ages that claimed to be this written document from Constantine that gave Pope Sylvester all of the temporal or earthly power that the Emperor had once had in Rome. That all of the lands in the Western Roman Empire were donated to the Pope. The Pope was given all of the authority and power that the Roman Emperor had once enjoyed there. Well, that never happened. That was a forgery.
But the Waldensians, like most medieval people, thought it was a historical fact. And they dated the beginning of the time of the end from that supposed donation. You may remember from that tract, it says it's been 1,100 years since the time of the end. That is 1,100 years since Constantine, which they felt ushered in the time of the end.
Actually, if they had existed then, we would know it because there's probably no period in church history prior to the invention of the printing press that we have so much historical evidence to know what went on. You had the historian Eusebius who lived during that whole time period, who wrote not only his history of the church, but the life of Constantine. If any of those things had happened, we would know about it.
There are proclamations from Constantine and from the various Roman emperors after him against all of the different heretical groups. And they list them all and there's no group in there like the Waldensians or that later became the Waldensians. But there were groups of kingdom Christians who held similar beliefs, like the Novatianists and the Donatists. In fact, today the Waldensian Church itself does not make that claim. They realized that was a historical error. That never happened. It was pious thinking.
But they realized, no, we started with Waldesius. But true kingdom Christians didn't start with Waldesius. They started ever since the time of Jesus. Well, third myth, and I'm just going to touch on this briefly, is that the Waldensians preserved the true Bible, which somehow read exactly as the King James. I've seen little tracts that say that. Of course, that's tied to the second myth that the Waldensians were even around at the time of Constantine. And then it's just a total fabrication.
Because we have copies of the old Waldensian Bibles, and they don't read like the King James, because they're not made from the same Greek text. They were made from Jerome's Latin Vulgate translation. Now there is a Waldensian Bible that is very similar to the King James, and we're going to get to that in a minute, but it doesn't date back to the time of Constantine or to the time of Waldesius. Now I want to just very briefly tell you about their meetings and their organization.
Of course, originally the Waldensians were simply Roman Catholics who had come to a knowledge and appreciation of the kingdom gospel with hearts that were truly reborn. But originally they attended Catholic masses and they encouraged the people they preached to to go to church more often.
However, once the Roman Catholic Church pronounced them officially as heretics and began persecuting them, then they began having more of their own meetings in secret places, maybe in somebody's house, or sometimes even in caves or out in the woods. Yet at the same time, they would still attend the Roman Catholic Church, typically. I don't mean that all of them necessarily did, but that would be one very key thing that would mark you as a heretic if you weren't showing up regularly at mass.
So, as I said, their normal practice would be to at least maybe once a week or once a month, attend the local Roman Catholic Church. And they didn't feel the Roman Catholic Church was Babylon the Great, or at least certainly initially they didn't feel it all that way. They just feel it was a church that needed reform that had become corrupt.
Although hounded by the Inquisition and knowing that torture and death awaited them if they were caught, Waldensian evangelists took their simple kingdom message all throughout Europe. Now because Jesus had told his followers do not call anyone father, they did not call their leaders father the way the Roman Catholics did. They called him Barba, which means uncle. And the Waldensian churches would send out Barbas who were ministers and evangelists sort of combined.
Usually in pairs, there used to be an older man, older maybe meaning 40 or 50, mature man, I should say, along with a younger man who might be in his 20s. And so the younger would learn from the older one. They would go throughout Europe, usually disguised as merchants, and they would have maybe actual wares. In fact, that's perhaps how they supported themselves was as a merchant. But then they'd also have a Bible in there.
And when they sense the situation was right, they might bring out the Bible and say," I've got a pearl of great value. I'd like to share with those who would be interested." Or something like that. And then in secret someone's house, they could be more open. And often Catholics would come to them to confess their sins to the Barba because they recognize these as holy righteous people. Over the years, the Waldensian Barbas developed an entire underground network.
They had contacts all throughout Europe, as far east as Bohemia, as far north, nearly all the way to the Baltic Sea. And so they could travel. There would be places they could stay with families. They would come, share the gospel, preach to them, hear their sins, that sort of thing. Now in the early 1400s, in Bohemia, where the Waldensians had had a witness, a reformer arose named John Huss. Now, he did not come from the Waldensian contacts.
His reform was directly connected with the earlier reform of John Wycliffe in England. Because one of the Czech nobility, Anne of Bohemia, had married into the British royal family. And through her contact, a lot of young men from Bohemia went over to England and studied at Oxford. And there they got acquainted with Wycliffe's teachings and brought it back to Bohemia. And Wycliffe was not what I call a kingdom Christian.
His gospel was more that of Augustine, and yet it was still better than what the Roman Catholic Church was offering. Now John Huss and his followers did not teach or preach that Christians had to live literally by the Sermon on the Mount. That wasn't the essence of his reform. It was dealing with certain abuses in the Roman Catholic Church, such as not allowing the laity to drink of the communion cup, but rather just to see it pass by and only the priests drink of it. That was one of the issues that he raised.
And there were other ones, the selling of indulgences, for example. Well, even after he had been guaranteed safe passage to the Council of Constance, they nevertheless the Roman Catholics there burned him at the stake after on oath making this promise of safe passage. Well, the people of Bohemia were outraged by this and they took up arms against the Roman Catholic Church. And the two armies came together and initially the Bohemians succeeded.
And so the Roman Catholics sued for peace, promised they would institute some of these reforms, such as giving the laity the cup. And so the majority of what were called Hussites came back in the Roman Catholic Church, sided with them, but there was a small group who were later known as Taborites after their original leader, and they held out. And so then the other Bohemians who had joined the Roman Catholic Church, along with the Roman Catholic armies, fought then against the Taborites.
And initially, the Taborites were very successful. And they established contacts with the Waldensians, even though the two groups had more dissimilarity than they did similarity. But the one thing they had in common is that they were both being persecuted by the Roman Catholics. And so the Taborites helped the Waldensians as they were able to. And there was cross-pollination between the two groups. Some of the Augustine teachings that Wycliffe had resurrected and had gone into Bohemia through John Huss, et cetera.
I think seeds of this were planted with the Waldensians at that point in time. On the other hand, the Waldensians had quite an influence on some of these Taborites, and as a result of the Waldensian influence, a group arose among them who rejected using force to defend themselves and to protect themselves from persecution. And they formed a church that was initially very similar to the Waldensians. They called themselves the Unitas Fratrum, the United Brethren, and later most of Christ knew them as the Moravians.
And they're still around with us today. Now, they later lost most of their teachings, but originally they were non-resistant the way the Waldensians were. Well, for nearly four centuries, the Waldensians lived like hunted animals, never knowing when the armies of the church would descend upon them. Various Waldensian communities, the Pope would send a crusade against them and just obliterate everybody.
One of their last strongholds was in the Piedmont Valley, which is nestled in the Alps along the border between France and Italy. And yet only 30 years before the Reformation, the Pope's Crusaders descended on the Waldensian settlements in the Alps with horrible cruelty. They butchered any Waldensian they could find.
They would disembowel parents right in front of their children, or they would chop off the heads of children and then tie their heads around their father's neck as they marched him off to be burned at the stake. In one situation, many of the women and children had taken refuge in a cave. And so the Pope's crusaders just lit fires there and roasted them alive or suffocated them with the smoke from the fire. By the early 1500s, the vast majority of the Waldensians had been exterminated.
And yet the movement itself survived if only by a thread and only in limited areas, again, in that alpine region along Italy, France, and what would today be Switzerland. And yet the Waldensians weren't ready to quit at all. In fact, now that the printing press was out, they began printing tracts again. Well, this brings us to the final segment of tonight's discussion on the Waldensians, which is their meeting with the Swiss reformers.
Now you can imagine how elated the Waldensians were when they heard news of the Reformation breaking out in Germany. Here for so many centuries, they had been the only one standing up to the Roman Catholic Church, or at least the only ones they knew of, except for the brief movement there in Bohemia. And most of that came to naught, or it was settled with swords, not the way of Jesus Christ.
So when they heard about this upheaval in Germany, the churches in Italy, that is the Waldensian churches, sent two Barbas to travel up to Germany and find out more. What was it about? Are they really at one with us? Is this something perhaps we need to join? As I had told you before, the Barbas always went out in pairs and was almost always an older or more mature man, along with the younger one. And this was the same way in this case. The older man's name was Giorgio. We don't have a last name for him.
The younger man was Martin Gonan. Well, on their way to Germany, they stopped at the Swiss town of Aigle, and they were intending to just spend a night or two there. But while there they heard about this new Reformer named William Farel, and they decided to hear his preaching. Well, Farel was a very forceful evangelist and preacher, and he had quite a forceful personality as well. So after hearing him preach, they arranged for a meeting with him and told him who they were. We were Waldensians.
Well of course the Reformers had heard of the Waldensians, so they were given a warm reception there from William Farel. And he told them about the doctrines of the Reformation. Well, see, the doctrines of the Reformation were not the kingdom teachings of Jesus Christ. None of the Reformers, and I'm not including the Anabaptists here, I'm talking about the major reformers like Zwingli and Luther, later Calvin.
They were not teaching a return to the teachings of Jesus Christ, to the Sermon on the Mount, to living godly lives. They were all teaching that our salvation is totally, by grace alone, that we're predestined before we're ever born for either eternal life or eternal punishment. So these two Barbas weren't sure what to think. But the forceful Farel had made quite an impression on the younger of the two Barbas, this Martin Gonan.
Well, instead of going on to Germany, they returned to their home base in Italy and told them what they had learned. Now, of course, Martin Gonan was saying," Hey, we need to join these people." And Giorgio, the older one, was saying," I'm not sure this is really something we want to be part of." For one thing, they are working through the princes and through the city magistrates.
The very thing that we've avoided all of these years of mixing the church with the secular government, this is how they're bringing about their Reformation. Well, for four years, the Waldensian congregations talked about this in Italy, and finally they decided to send some more representatives to Switzerland to talk some more. Well, these four other representatives were again given a very warm welcome and were praised for their heroic stand through all of the centuries.
And Farel and other reformers there in Switzerland said," We want you to join us. You need to be part of us. You're our heroes." But now there's just a few little things you need to change in order to fit in with us. Well, what needed to change was really essentially everything they stood for. They were going to have to give up in order to be part of the Reformation, or at least the foundational doctrines and positions of the Waldensian Church.
Well, the four weren't in agreement on what they should say to the invitation, so they said we'll report back to our home churches in Italy. So they too went back and there was a lot of discussion going on. There were basically three different parties within the overall Waldensian movement. The liberals who are mainly younger people were saying this Reformation is something from God. We need to join this.
And if we have to change to join them, well then apparently they're right, and we're the ones who've been wrong all of these centuries. The conservative group was saying, no, this isn't the same thing we're teaching at all. This is just like the Roman Catholic Church going back with swords and using the power of the government. They take on wealth, all of the things that our movement has stood against. They're guilty of these same things.
And in the middle group, the moderates were saying," Let's dialogue some more. Maybe there's a way to find common ground." Well, eventually a conference was held in Italy in the small, I think it's just a valley called Chanforan. And William Farel came down and other ones from Switzerland. And they were skilled, powerful preachers. And at the end of the day, they swayed the majority. And so as a group, the Waldensians decided we're going to join the Reformation.
And this meant drawing up a whole new body of doctrines, because as I said, it really meant giving up everything they had stood for for so many years. Let me read to you some of these positions that they took up now at the conference at Chanforan. And all of this is preserved. It's something you can find in historical records.
There were a number of them, but the ones that I want to look at are the ones that were so important, so unique to the Waldensian movement, the very things that tied them into the earlier kingdom movements. One of the points of doctrine that they adopted was a Christian may swear by the name of God without contravention to what is written in Matthew 5, provided that one who so swears does not take the name of God in vain.
Well Jesus said," You've heard it said when you take an oath or swear that you fulfill your oath." But I say don't swear at all. Well see, now the Swiss reformers convinced them," Oh, it's okay to swear, just make sure you do what you've sworn." Directly contradictory to what Jesus said. Another one: Oral confession of sins is not commanded by God, and it has been determined according to Holy Scriptures that the true confession of a Christian is to confess to God alone.
Well, that's maybe not so bad if the issue were confessing to a priest with the understanding that unless the priest gives you forgiveness, you're not forgiven. But see, the Waldensians weren't practicing that. They were practicing oral confession. The scriptures say," Confess your sins to one another." And so it had been their practice from the beginning for their members, and they would take confessions from other Christians, from Catholics, whoever wanted to come to them and confess their sins.
And again, not with the idea of I can forgive your sin, but that you can confess it to me and I can extend the forgiveness of God if you are truly repentant. Another one of the statements they accepted at Chanforan was a Christian may exercise the Office of Magistrate over Christians who have done wrong. So now they're agreeing we can be part of the government.
The very thing that had caused them so much persecution, they're preaching that the church had sinned when once the Christian church joined with the Roman state. Now they're agreeing that it's okay to do that. They accepted another Reformation doctrine. All those that have been and shall be saved have been elected of God before the foundation of the world. So what's the point of going out and preaching then? And all the things that they had done all these centuries. What's the point?
You've already been predestinated one way or the other. And that leads to why they accepted the other statement that said," The minister of the Word of God ought not to itinerant from place to place, that is, travel from place to place, except it be for some great good of the church." In other words, this business of sending out barbas to preach throughout different countries and that's gotta end. You preach inside a church.
And only if the church body as a whole sees some good reason to send you out should you go out. Because again, you can't save anybody, it's already been predetermined who's gonna be saved and who isn't. Well, this was quite a theological coup for William Farel and the other Swiss reformers. The Waldensians, as I said, had basically given up everything that had made them unique. All the things that their forefathers had died for, they were now just without a fight, giving up.
They even agreed there to give up their practice of voluntary poverty. They weren't to preach against riches anymore, or to teach that a Christian should live in poverty. And finally, the Reformers convinced them," You need to quit using this translation you've been using for several hundred years and use one of the translations that we're producing. We'll go ahead and make a translation for you in your native tongue, but we'll be the ones doing it.
It'll be from Erasmus' Greek text." And I think that's where this myth started that, oh, the Waldensians had this Bible for centuries that read just like the King James. It wasn't until the Reformers, who were using the same Greek text from Erasmus that the King James was made from, when they redid the Waldensian Bible, yes, that's why now it reads fairly similarly, although not exactly. So Chanforan spelled the end of one of the most significant kingdom movements in history.
What happened to the Waldensians after that? Well, eventually they moved to Switzerland as a group and became part of the Reformation. They accepted everything. Later, they decided to return to their ancestral homelands in northern Italy and the Alps. But this time when they came back, they came back with guns. And they returned to their lands by becoming some of the fiercest fighters that Italy had known. And the next centuries of their history is marked by continual bloodshed and killing.
And they still suffered horrible massacres, even when they decided they would defend themselves with guns. In fact, at one point, Cromwell in England had to threaten the Catholic authorities that he would send an army over there to protect the Waldensians if they didn't end the horrible persecution of them. Well, I'm the type of person that when I'm interested in a group, I want to go there and visit them. I had related the other night about visiting the ones who are mistakenly called historians.
And for many years, I've wanted to meet the Waldensians. I knew a lot about their history. I knew they had basically lost everything, that they had become part of the Reformation, and I knew they were still around in Italy. Well, a couple of years ago, I was in France for a family reunion. On my father's side of the family, my relatives come from France just a couple of generations ago. In fact, from southern France, where the Waldensians had once had a very important ministry.
And while my wife and I were there in France, we visited a kingdom family in Germany that we had come to know. And then we traveled in Italy, and we went to the village of Torre Pellice, which is still a strong Waldensian center. And there they have a large church, and more importantly, they have a museum and library.
And I thought, I want to meet these people, because I had found when I met Anabaptists, who we'll be talking about in a couple of evenings, that there are liberal ones who've lost so much of what Anabaptism originally stood for, but then there are conservative ones who've kept the thing going, kept the original positions going for many centuries.
And I was hoping it would be the same way with the Waldensians, that behind all of the liberal ones and the ones who had accepted the Reformation without question, that maybe there would still be ones there who longed for the old ways. So my wife and I drove to this little village. It was quite difficult to find, but with some help from various Italians, we were able to find it and to go to the museum and talk to the people there. Well, what we found was so disappointing I almost wished I hadn't gone.
They truly had totally lost the kingdom Christianity they once had. Today, they are nothing more than another liberal Protestant church in Europe. No different from the Reformed Church in any way. They were ordaining women ministers back in the 60s. They've given up any modest dress they used to have, any biblical teachings that would go against modern society. They're very active politically and in various social movements, that sort of thing.
And in their museum, they have many displays praising Luther and praising Calvin. They've got displays of their different weapons that they had in their history after they had joined the Reformation. Just a very small part of the museum dealt with their original history and their original positions. They had a bookstore there and we were able to obtain a number of books, which have been most helpful. A lot of the research that has gone into this message, in fact, was from the material that I got there.
I wanted to get it from the horse's mouth and know for sure what had really happened to the movement and what his history had really been. But as I said, it was quite heartbreaking to know that this important kingdom movement had eventually been snuffed out not by persecution, but because of joining the Reformation. It was very similar to the end of the primitive church when it joined with Constantine.
And yet if I had lived back there in the 1500s, if I had been a Waldensian, I may have been one of the ones saying," Yeah, let's join the Reformers." I'm in no position to judge them, because I haven't had to make that kind of decision ever. But the history of kingdom Christianity did not end with the Waldensians and with the Reformation. So we're going to be talking now tomorrow night and the night after about some of the other kingdom groups.
And you'll be happy to know that Kingdom Christianity is still alive today.