In this teaching session, the speaker addresses the current political climate and the deep influence it has on society. He emphasizes the need for Christians to respond to this crisis by taking on the wisdom and talents they possess and setting an example for future generations. The speaker highlights the heroic response of individuals in the past, such as Leonhardt Bowens, who baptized a record number of people during a time of persecution. He also mentions the inspiring witness of the early Hutterites, who not only died well but also actively preached the gospel and called upon all nations to listen. The speaker concludes by quoting an ancient hymn that emphasizes the command to preach the gospel and the potential for facing persecution, while finding comfort in the eternal security of believers.

Okay, and John Wesley, glad you're here, and your oldest son, Stephen. Would you stand, son? Thank you. Blessings. You may sit down. And we're just glad that you folks could be here to support Dean. Thank you for your brothers and sisters who came from, tell us where they all came from. We have some that came from the Elmendorf community. Brother Gary Fetter, the minister there in Elmendorf came, and that's a tremendous blessing. Some brothers came from also a new community we have down in Missouri from Grand River, which is Missouri. Don't be bashful. Go ahead and stand. We have Johnny and who else was down there? Oh, there he is right here. Okay, and David from Elmendorf. Amen. So I see some of the sisters back there. Yep, and some, Michael Harris came also, and they've been related to us for a long time, so they've been a blessing too. Yeah, for those who wanted to know, I just got this new pair of glasses, and this is weird. I should have spent the extra money and got bifocals, so I got to do this jiggling back and forth here. We have to come to grips with actually using these things. Okay, for those of you who are wondering how much this conference is going to cost, it's going to be somewhere around $12,000 to $14,000, with the rental, the building, the food, and we want to thank you all for sharing. There's a basket in the back if you were out to the restroom and you want to contribute. Feel free. Thank you. Brother Dean, I met you years ago and appreciated your heart. I'm always excited. My father always said, he said, you know, God can raise up people from these stones to be followers of Jesus, and he said we should never become too proud that we got it and we have it all together, because God doesn't, he doesn't, you know, if we let down the ball, God's going to raise up people somewhere else, and your background, you and your wife in the army, and coming to being, to become conscious objectors, and then I met you there at a brother's place, we won't mention any names, in Pennsylvania, and it was kind of a crossroad experience, and I heard you two brothers, I was sitting there, I was listening, you're like, you know, I've come this far 20 years now, and I'm seeing that the young people of the people who I was fellowshipping with are going this direction toward the world. I'm coming this way from the world. He says, I don't want my children to go back that way that I came from, into mainline evangelicalism, Protestantism, the world, and he said, I got to do something. So that was the beginning as you began to think that you had to leave that congregation and plug into somewhere where you're trying to do more intentional community and brotherhood, and we're excited about that. Thank you. And what does Jesus have to tell you to us tonight? What would your brotherhood and the brothers there, and as we think what John said, we're just looking forward to what you said. If you want to say anything more about your family, about you, what you do for a living, things like that, to make it personal to the people, that's great. Okay. Yeah, thank you. Well, praise the Lord. I have six children and a wonderful, beautiful wife that I've been married to almost 28 years, and it's been a tremendous blessing. I just turned 50 last month in February, and I guess, you know, as we ponder over that, I've been in the Anabaptist and in radical circles. As soon as I got out of the army, I lived my first part of my journey there, right down the street with David Bersow, and spent, he has a kind of a father to me in those days. And I guess over those 25 years, it's been now, amongst the Anabaptist and radical Christian world. In many ways, I still feel very much almost a fool to be here in front of you. You have so many things that pass me up and my family. There's so more ground and further ground that we want to go. There's so much experience and wisdom that I feel in this room, that I feel like a fool sometimes of the things that I have to say. Nevertheless, the Lord has put a burden in my heart, and I come here with sort of an encouragement. I come here with a longing that I do feel that, I guess we're coming into a time in our day that I believe things are going from bad to worse. I believe we're living in a time when it is many political things that are happening, and that we're seeing things changing, and we're seeing an influence in a very deep level that's happening to us. And I guess if I could dig a little bit into my background, I would like to come here and stand before you as a recruiter. As a recruiter to plead with all of us to take these words of Jesus and this incredible wisdom and talents and gifts that we have in this room, and take on this crisis that we have coming before us in such a way that the children, unless Christ comes, which sometimes it seems like it will be very soon, that the children who follow us will see an example and a heroic example. We were getting to talk about this topic, and you know, Nathan and Matthias, they give you these very challenging topics. You know, we began to bat around. You'd give them a topic, and then suddenly you'd get this text with a topic like this. And I began to be challenged by the topic and going into it. And the more I read it and into it and looked into it, the more excited I got. So basically, here's what I would like to do. It's a two-part session. Today is going to be more on the line of a teaching session. And Saturday night, we'll be preaching. I may not even use a slideshow for Saturday night. I might just preach that. But here, in particular, what I'm going to be looking at is the response during a very difficult political time in our history, which was the very beginning, the heroic response that happened from the Anabaptist people. And my desire for that is to show us that we're not coming into a time of crisis that we don't have some kind of a basis in the past to draw from. I believe it's an ongoing thing, and we're going to get back into that fight. I'm going to be talking about the early Anabaptists, and I'm going to be skipping over some of the normal narrative. And the primary thing that I want to get across today in this short session is the political things that were going on during the birth of the Anabaptists, and also about the Muslim jihad that was coming against Europe and coming against the Anabaptists during this time. It's funny. I was talking to an older brother at the community in Altona, and he was saying, Muslims came against Europe in those days? And I said, well, yeah. We look at our history, and we hear they're called the Turks. But somehow, we never associate that with the news that we hear today with Muslim jihad and things like that. I'm going to read to you some of those things. I'm going to give you some accounts. And what I want you to do, some of these are very graphic accounts. I looked through the martyr's mirror in our Hutterian Chronicles and looked at some different examples in this. And I want to show that out of that incredible time of intensity and the incredible time of both political upheaval and the Muslim jihad against the people of God, the response was heroic. And I would like to call us to looking at that again. So I'm going to begin now. So I still got to give a scripture. If you have your Bible, let's turn to 1 Samuel 30, verse 1. It's an impressive time in the history of Israel. And David is young David. It says, I'm going to get right in. It says in 1 Samuel 30, verse 1, and it came to pass when David and his men were come to Ziklag on the third day that the Amalekites had invaded the south and Ziklag and smitten Ziklag and burned it with fire and had taken the women captive that were therein. They slew not any, either great or small, but carried them away and went on their way into slavery. So David and his men came to the city and behold, it was burned with fire and their wives and their sons and their daughters were taken captive. Then David and the people that were with him lifted up the voice and wept until they had no more power to weep. And David's two wives were taking captives. Ahenuim, the Jezreelites, and Abigail, the wife of Nabal, the Carmelite. And David was greatly distressed for the people spake of stoning him because the soul of all the people was grieved, every man for his sons and for his daughters. But David encouraged himself in the Lord, his God. It was a bad time. It was a bad time. And the response, though, that we're going to see is a time that our people had, too. So during our history in this, I'm going to focus on two main things. The Spanish Inquisition and how that was causing political upheaval through what was happening in Europe at the time. At the beginning of the Anabaptists and the Muslim Jihad. To do that, I'm going to look at two groups, the Dutch Mennonites, and yes, I had to get it in somewhere, the Hutterites, okay? So we're going to look at those two groups because mainly they were the two that were in the worst times of the earliest times of our history in Anabaptists. You know, coming into the 1500s, well, they had, we just got past the, in the 1400s, and particularly the 1300s, the plague. And the plague, you know, you can't hardly look at European history without looking at the effects of what happened with that. And I mean, entire, in 1479, what does it say here? 80, an outbreak in 1471 took as much as 10 to 15% of the population, while the death rate of the plague in 1479 could have been as high as 20%. In 1483, particularly to our people, Germany plagued, that Germany received a plague, and one-fourth of all the children under five died. In 1519, it's recorded that Zwingli, who was the leader that influenced the Anabaptists, he just about died of the plague. He writes very clearly that he thought he was going to die, and he pulled out of it. Conrad Grebel, it's quite possible, died because of, he also was suffering from the plague. And so, just this, I threw in there, just to kind of give that to you of what's going on. My hope is that I can kind of present the picture of what Europe was like in 1525. All right, coming in, you know, in 1517, a very big thing happened. October 31st, 1517, Martin Luther nailed these complaints about the selling of indulgences on this castle church door, and it's looked at as the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. It was an incredible time. And I love this map. I saw it on Wikipedia, and it's a very good map of looking at, this is the world of where Anabaptists came from in 1525. And it's an interesting map, because if you look at it, it shows the whole Holy Roman Empire. And as you can see, as we're going to look way over to the left, over here, we have Holland. And then way over here, we have Nickelsburg. This would have been Moravia and all this. Up here, we have, you know, Poland area, and the different things, and the Swiss brother more here, and all obviously down here. But these, all of this would have been under the Holy Roman Empire under Charles V, and more or less different ways, and more or less different times. But this is a picture, you kind of look at it now, when you look at the map, Moravia almost seems apart from it. But it's all part of this whole Inquisition, Jihad, and political upheaval that was happening in the time of when we began. Again, I'm going to kind of smear over the typical Anabaptist history, because I want to focus more on the secular history that was happening at the time. The big leaders, the big family was the Habsburgs, okay? And Charles V would have been one of these. And I know it's a busy map, but if you start looking at it, you can kind of get something out of it. As you look at it here, these are the different eras, and I have this in your handout, different eras of when the Habsburgs family had rose in the power. And basically, you can see kind of the Netherlands over here, and over here, the Austria, and the different growth of this. Well, it was reaching its zenith. It was reaching the most that it ever was during the time when Charles V took over, and he took over as a young man. Born in the year 1500, he took his power, and when he was about 16 years old, he was well-educated. Incredible opportunity. Magellan had just circled the globe. They had just started to look at different trade opportunities. They discovered silver in Mexico, and they were beginning to exploit that. For the first time, we learned how to exploit another people that weren't directly connected to us, and he was there to inherit it all. He was actually very educated, but I found this quote, and all of you German speakers, you're going to love this. He learned lots of different languages, Spanish, and Italian, French, but I found this quote from Charles V. He said this, I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse. So you'll have to argue with him on that. So anyway, at that time, Spanish, of course, would have been looked at as a very, in Latin, of course, a very holy language. But on 1522, at a young 22 years of age, Charles V had a very important meeting to start out his time of his career. He met up at the Diet of Worms with Martin Luther. And with all the stuff that we have against Martin Luther, and rightfully so, I'm going to give him a few slams here. You got to throw Martin Luther a bone for this moment. There in the Diet of Worms, standing in front of everyone's, you know, being asked what he recant, there he is saying, here I stand. I can do no other. It was certainly Martin Luther's finest moment. And Charles V, the young Charles V, who's taking power, had to look at Martin Luther and realize, it's going to be a fight. But Charles V was trying to do a lot of things. He was having some different problems with the Vatican, and their power. He wanted Catholicism, but yet he wanted it on his terms. He was going over to America, and they began to realize again that, I mean, even before him, that the exploiting of this country, and what they could do. Here we can see in 1521 and 1519, right around this era, they're beginning to exploit incredible amounts of silver, and enslaving people over in Central America and Mexico, and bringing that silver and all those things back to Europe. It was a great idea for the greedy, but it had an effect that it caused an incredible inflation. And even though he had the potential to have an immense wealth, somehow he bankrupt the entire Holy Roman Empire. As you can look at this, I found these interesting things. Again, on comparison, this crisis to the crisis that sits ahead of us. The price of gold, before they started doing that, was up here, crashing down when they began to bring the silver, and the precious metals back to Europe, causing inflation in an incredible amount of time here, that really made their money much worthless. As a matter of fact, we don't get repeated to that till the Industrial Revolution, World War I, and oh, the worst is, oh, that's now. But anyway, that gives you an understanding of some of just the economic, and political things that were just in the world, when the Anabaptists came on the scene. Right after Martin Luther began, he made it out of the date of worms, and an incredible, because he had some friend, a particular one friend, who was a lord that protected him. He was hidden to the castle, and while he hid into a castle, he wrote the German Bible. But while he did that, the peasants were like, well, this is great, this is what we've been talking about. And it caused a war all over Germany, where the peasants began to say, this is our moment, let's go, we've got Martin Luther. And we think of theologians these days, Martin Luther was like, I don't know, Donald Trump, or a cross between Donald Trump and a rock star. When he went from his town to worms, there's stories that people literally threw their flowers on him, the very priest, when he got to worms, fell down at his feet and kissed his feet when he went there. He had an incredible influence on the people there. But all around, so when he was hiding in the castle, translating the German Bible, all around Germany, you see the little crosses, or the little Xs, are battles where the peasants began to revolt. It was incredible, it was just, imagine this, you're hearing this over here, and this over there, and all that. And it was, people look at it, it's not just a social upheaval, they had many spiritual things that they were asking for too. So that's why they felt Martin Luther's gonna be on our side. And they began to ask for things like the ability to say where the taxes, they called it the great tithe, went. And they even had a sense of community where they said like, okay, in those days, the Holy Roman Empire would say, we're gonna send this priest to this place. And they said, we think the local community should be able to choose who their preachers are gonna be. And it kind of gave the reason why you hear stories about guys like George Blaurock, you know, knocking on the, with his cane on the church there, saying, you know, my house shall be called a house of prayer. He's rebuking them because in some ways, the peasants felt they had somewhat of a right. Whether that's right or wrong, George Blaurock did that. That's kind of the political world that was happening at the time. Martin Luther didn't stand with the peasants very well, and he had some choice things to say. He learned that he could use the power of the state to foster his way. And as Brother David brought us out to that, it was very effective. And he said this in his book called Against the Murderous Thieving Hordes of Peasants, in which he remarks, quote, let everyone who can smite, slay, and stab secretly or openly, nothing can be more poisonous, hurtful, or devilish than a rebel. It is just as one must kill a mad dog. If you do not strike him, he will strike you. Thus it may be that one who was killed fighting on the ruler's side may be a true martyr in the eyes of God if he fights with such a conscience as I have just described, for he is in God's word and obedient, is obedient to him. On the other hand, one who perishes on the peasant's side is an eternal brand of hell, for he bears the sword against God's word and is disobedient to him and is a member of the devil. Strange times these when a prince can win heaven with bloodshed better than other men with prayer. So much for Sola Fide. But anyway, so that was his whole stance and the peasants felt that they were portrayed. This went on just butchering through the different things and some different particular people came out. I threw in this one guy, Thomas Munster. Had nothing to do with the Munsterites. It's a completely different thing. This man is looked at as sort of like a proto or before Anabaptist. Actually, he was never rebaptized but became to be a big leader of the peasants. He actually wrote Conrad Grebel and as you heard, I think Edsel gave us that one of the excerpts from Conrad Grebel's letter to him begins to be just, this is just the stuff that's going on. I put these little symbols here and part of Marxist East Germany back when I went to the Berlin and Tonya and I lived over there. The winners write the history books and he would have been a hero in those days. The old Eastmark Frank had his face on it because he was this idea of bringing up the peasants and that type of thing that Marxists would have loved. He was a hero of that, of course. He met his defeat at the Battle of Frakenhausen in 1525 and he actually escaped there a little bit and died but that was kind of the end of the peasant revolt, 1525. Now what else happened in 1525, quick? Thank you. Amen, all right. Amen, the first Anabaptist got baptized. So this is the timing. So do you get what's all going on here? All right, now it's 1525. What happened in 1527, just shortly after the Anabaptists started? What's our typical Anabaptist history? What happened else? Good, Schleidheim Confession. So the Anabaptists were just getting together for the first time and writing things down. Michael Sattler was there with them leading the way. Well, at the same time, lots of political stuff is happening. For instance, the Pope is getting involved in trying to help Charles or kind of control Charles V, kind of help support the French for a while. The French get into war. Well, next thing you know it, somebody forgets to pay the soldiers and they get mad. So literally in 1527, thousands of these troops that were never paid their wages begin to come on Rome and completely take it over. The Vatican is destroyed. We're in Martin Luther's time. He was just going there and talking about all the incredible paintings and things. Literally, this is a painting from the time that they used the Vatican for a barn. It was completely taken over. And that's what was going on during the time that we're trying to figure out how to do this life in Schleidheim. Okay, incredible times. The Pope was taken. Oh, he ran over and crossed the Vatican. If you ever go to Rome, they have this little hidden castle, St. Angelo's. And he hid in there and they finally hid around him until they promised to pay them a ransom. And they eventually let him go. And it sort of set the stage for a little, gave Charles V a little more control. So wow, political upheaval that was going on during the time when all this happened. So here's that map that I like again. So we're looking over at the Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, so-called. And as we look at it, one thing has happened. So the persecutions start, as you just told me. So 1525, here's Zurich. We have the first Anabaptists starting here. They went over here to a little town right next to it, Zulikon. Another revival happened there. Incredible things happened. They began to go and it was spreading and spreading and spreading until finally the lords of Nickelsburg, who were always a little more kind of resistant to the imperialism of all of Charles V, and opened up their area to the Anabaptists. So that was an impressive time. But if that's not enough, Vatican overran, all these things going on with political upheaval. You don't really think of this when you go through reading your Anabaptist history. We had a Muslim jihad coming against Christian Europe like we have never imagined in our news that we hear today. It was, it was, it was, I'll show you what it was. Here is a, this is a magazine actually from the ISIS magazine today. The word jihad means struggle. The Muslims will use it kind of like almost in a salvation term. Your inner jihad they'll talk about. And jihad means any taking over of a, of a, any struggle that you go through. And they use this. But during the time, as you can see in purple here, was with the beginning here in the 1300s, this continual growth of the Ottoman Empire, which we kind of separate that from its religious, it's this expansion of the Muslims in Europe was growing more and more and more. And it was getting to the height, to a zenith at the time the Anabaptists started. Now, here's another one. This is from the very first issue of ISIS, their, their official magazine. And they're talking about this concept of the caliphate, the caliph. And what a caliphate is, is a state that's ran by a caliph. And a caliph is a succeeder of Muhammad. And that's why you hear today in the news about they have to swear allegiance to the head of the caliphate because it's a very important position. It's like the head of an entire religious area. Well, this kind of thing of expanding this caliphate, expanding this, this, the, the, the boundaries of Islam was going on full scale. Here's again from a modern ISIS image of what they're claiming for their caliphate in the end of this generation. Kind of scary. But not scary because Jesus Christ has overcome the world. So as we go here, here's a, here's a good one. Again, it's a busy map, but it's very good. If you can look at it here. And I gave you a handout on this. If you look at here, the, the ages of when these areas were conquered. And you can see here 1525, 1504, 1552, 1526, 1543, all of that advance. The high advance of the jihad against Europe was right around the time that the, the Anabaptists were getting started. It was a very politically dangerous time. So here's, again, some modern stuff. The ISIS with their flag. And the, the, what this flag translate to, I just gave a little bit here. There is no God but Allah. Muhammad is the messenger of God. Is what that little fancy calligraphy means. And then here, Allah, messenger, and Muhammad. You'll see this written in several different ways today. You'll see it on the flag of Saudi Arabia. You'll see it on bumper stickers in cars. But that's what that's actually saying. It's saying, there is none worthy to worship except Allah. And Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. And it's the, the proclamation of Islam. Here's one, an ISIS man threatening the White House. Here's one in a public school where they're actually, this is current, recent. Where they're teaching public school children to write that. The Shahada. And they're writing this very thing and learning how to write this Muslim thing. That's what, in a public school. It caused a bit of an outcry. And it should have. But this is what's going on today. But the crown jewel, or one of the crown jewels of Islam. Was taking this little town here, big town, Constantinople. And coming up into the 1500s, this happened. Muhammad had a certain proclamation. Or they would, some would say a prophecy. Or a battle charge. And this is it written on the gate of Constantinople church today. Verily you shall conquer Constantinople. What a wonderful leader will he be. And what a wonderful army will that army be. And that's that proclamation there in the Hagia Sophia today. Now this happened. And when it happened, it, in 14, in 1453. This, this changed the way people thought. They always thought, well, we'll kind of, we'll hold him back. But this is, you can see how what a huge trade route this was. Military and trade. As a matter of fact, when you can't find, you can't go through here anymore. You got to find a new way to India. And people end up discovering America and everything. But this is a very crucial military. And they took this. And when they did it, they did it with some of the largest weapons that had ever been done. It was a fierce army. When they were had, they were the blockade. They couldn't get the ships. They just carried the ships over a mountain to the other side to conquer. And finally, the Hagia Sophia, they took. And it was an incredible thing. And the fear that went through Europe with that was, was, that's what started the 1500s. But closer to this, 1526, Hungary falls. The southern part of Hungary falls to the, to the Muslims. And this was a huge battle causing now this, this constant force of, of the Islam coming against, coming against Europe. So now, thinking of that, does anybody remember some inflammatory thing Michael Sattler said when he was on the, now thinking of that's what was going on. It's now the date, it's 1527. Michael Sattler's in court. And they're saying, we found a letter where you said you would actually rather be on the Turks than with, with a Catholic or a Protestant or something. And he said this. He said, if the Turks should come, meaning the Muslim Jihad, we ought not to resist them. For it is written, thou shall not kill. We must not defend ourselves against the Turks and others of the, of our persecutors. But are to beseech God with earnest prayer to repel and to resist them. But that I said, that if a warning, that if a warning were right, if it were right, hypothetically, Sattler's saying, I would rather take the field against the so-called Christians who persecute, apprehend, and kill pious Christians than against the Turks was for this reason. The Turk is a true Turk, knowing nothing of the Christian faith, and is a Turk after the flesh. But you, who would be Christians, and who make your boast of Christ, persecute the pious witness of Christ, and are Turks after the spirit. That didn't win too many friends or influence people. So, but his attitude, you can see a clear, laser-sharp two kingdoms in that, don't you? Laser-sharp understanding of why God gives us kings and rulers and different things. And I, I have a new thing I did in Tennessee, a video on non-resistance. My, Tanya helped me out too. We did, she did her testimony when we did that. It's over there available, a DVD set. And I go into particular a whole day on how God uses foreign nations in this. I don't have time tonight. So again, this is the kind of thing that's happening. So now it's 1529, 1527, a lot of the Anabaptists are making their way to, to Moravia. It's 1529, and they're actually coming against Vienna. And, and it's, it's impressive. So here are the first whole way, in the three short years, all this is going on. Three short years from the beginning of that first baptism. When they made it, when it was opened up to them in 1527 to go from Zurich to Nickelsburg, they went with 12,500 converts to go there. Wow. At a time when I don't think anybody in this room would say, if you hang out and kind of be quiet a little bit, I think it'd be a good idea. But here's, you see what Brother Edsel said early on about the crystal-centric hermeneutic? I, I cannot agree with Brother Edsel's more on the absolute importance that Jesus Christ himself is our salvation. He is our church. He is our theology. He is our example. He is our command. He is everything. Jesus Christ himself. And everything is interpreted through him. That's the crystal-centric hermeneutic that the early Anabaptists got a hold of. And that's what they were birthed on. That's what these young men cut their teeth on. How could they just sit there and be silent? If Christ said go, the commands are there, even at times like this. Impressive. So they get there. Now the first really big temptation, they get to Nickelsburg, 12,000 people there. The, the count's pretty nice. Lichtenstein's gets pretty excited about it. He himself becomes an Anabaptist, gets baptized. But what's happening? The political upheaval. The jihad's now coming up over Austria, coming up on them. Charles V says, listen, I want everybody there, all of your men there, to make sure they walk around with a sword all the time, ready to defend. All the time. Now they just went through a lot. They'd just been there a year. All of this movement's very new. And they finally got just a bit of peace. Just a bit. And the, and the emperor says, I just want you guys to walk around ready, just in case the Muslims attack, the jihad happens. And out of those 12,500, out of those 12,500, 200 said, no, we can't. And you know who those 200 are today? Or the heritage of. That, those 200 became the, what became the Hutterites. And they continued to go in there into the, to the area. Now here's a picture written from the day of talking about the horror. This is a, an early drawing showing here of just the complete surrounding of, of Vienna when it was being attacked. And it's such a perfect time in history here. And also a hundred, almost a hundred years later, when they tried it again with more, that God plainly says, this far, no further. There's no reason why they wouldn't have won this battle in 159 or in the later 1600s. They were way outmanned. The Vienna was way outmanned, but God says this far and no further. Again, I don't have, it's not an entire discussion on non-resistance, but powerful, powerful times. All right, go back to scripture. So David realizes that all his children are being under attack. How many here do we feel in our time and the things that we have, either materialistic things or the things of compromise or the things that are going on, the, the, the challenges that we have in our churches, the challenges that we hear from the world of all the different things. How much do we feel our children under attack? But here's what happened with David. In 2nd, 1st Samuel 30, verse seven. And David said to Abathar the priest, Ahimelech's son, I pray thee, bring me hither the ephod. And Abathar brought hither the ephod to David. And David inquired of the Lord saying, shall I pursue after this troop? Shall I overtake them? And he answered him, pursue, for thou shalt surely overtake them. And without fail, recovery all. That was the attitude of these early Anabaptists in Moravia and the early Anabaptists in Holland. Pursue, you come against us, you attack us, but with the sword of Jesus Christ and not the sword of the flesh, we're going to go forward and we're going to pursue. And that's just what they did. So again, these, these first 200 didn't compromise. Again, I'm going to talk about these two groups, heroic responses. The early Hutterites and the early Dutch Mennonites. In 1527, if you take the average of who showed up for the martyrs synod. So 60 missionary leaders come up to Augsburg in 1527 to discuss where we're going to go, all of Europe. These are the fourth of Swiss brethren and South Germany get together. We're going to send some people out this way, send some people out that way. 60 ministers came together. In five years, you know how many were left? Two, two. And so I've kind of a 5% chance of living in those days, but that's not going to stop them. Why? Do you know why? If you really believe today that you will never die, what a power is that? We believe in the resurrection. And these men, women, and children ran forward in the boldness of Jesus Christ, knowing that they can't die. And so they went forward and incredible they did. They got together. The early Hutterites went up there. But right from the beginning, they were there just living on absolute poverty. And the Hutterian Chronicles records, as the members of the church began to increase in number, their zeal and divine grace moved them to send brothers out into other countries, especially to Tyrol. They were there one year, and they had all kind of leadership political problems. But in that one year, they decided we've got to go. We've got to keep. Why? Well, because Jesus said you had to. It's a command, but it's a get to command. Amen. So they went and they picked up some gifted people. They picked up this man by the name of Jacob Hooter, who was working with the Hutterites for three years. They eventually actually started naming the whole movement after him. He was only there for three years. And as they went forward, they began to bring in people. And this is what happens. When we begin to see what the potential is in here, and I tell you, I'm truly, I'm not just saying that as some sort of rhetorical flattery. The talent, gifted businessmen, scholars, godly families, the ability that we have to be able to take this generation not giving up the things that we know that are dear. This is the wisdom we actually even can bring to this 21st century. A little bit that they didn't even have. The wisdom that is in this room, the experiences, and going forward. And when they did that, they began to attract new talent. They began to get people. Hans Zamen, for instance, when he became a bishop in the Hutterites, he was an eight-year-old little boy standing in goofy down now current Italy, watching George Blaurock being burnt at the stake. Eight-year-old little boy. He ended up becoming a bishop. Started an incredible mission activity, working out in Moravia in those early times. Now, in those days, a little further, when we get to 1530, those early Hutterites had about a 20% chance of surviving. Still incredible. So now, but here is the thing that I really wanna get, and then I'm gonna go to the Dutch. All of this stuff, and I'm gonna read you some stuff that are frankly, there's some things I can't. As I read through the first volume of the chronicles, Hutterian chronicles, there's some of these things, pages that I wrote on here that really are totally inappropriate. I love this. I wish that every church here would keep a chronicle. These are great. Imagine as a historian, brother, you must love these. And they actually, when you get a date and a time to, like this day, our community here was raided and caught on fire and these different things and just drastic things that were happening. And the heroic response continually, continually from the people of God. Here from the chronicles, it says this in 1540, to build up the house of God with his chosen, God gave his servants the courage and eagerness to send brothers out in various directions. A burning zeal for the truth was now kindled among people through the witness given, who bore the cross as a sign of victory over their bloodstained banner. And this same year of 1540, the assembly of the Lord sent brothers out on mission journeys. Leonhard Lentizel was sent again to Tyrol, Christoph Gaschel to Syria and Carthenia and Peter Riedemann to Hesse, where he was imprisoned. Hans Ginter was sent into Lower Swabia and Wurtenberg. From all these places, God led many people to his church, which spread widely throughout Moravia. Incredible. But now I'm gonna skip just for time. Different examples of the strategy are written in the chronicles, how they would send and set different times in different places that they would send brothers. This is when you look to the martyr's mirror, it doesn't distinguish which particular group and I like that. Many of these early martyrs were those living in Moravia amongst the Hutterites and these different things and it's an impressive time. But then it got even worse. Now you had the Europe with all the political upheaval and with the Muslim Jihad and things got really, really bad. I'm gonna read you some quotes for this reason. I think things are gonna get bad, I do. I think that we need to wake up and realize when these things get even a little bit bad, what is the way that our forefathers dealt with them? Here's some really bad times. In 1605, frightening reports followed one upon another that the Hungarians, the Turks and the Tartars were gaining ground. The town of Tirnau and Skalitz surrendered and so did many Hungarian lords. On some of those estates, our brothers were living. The enemy drew closer and closer and the burning, murdering and pillaging began. The church had to undergo great privitation and terror and untold anguish of heart such as they'd never been or suffered before. It began when the enemy made a night raid in Sabatish on May 3rd through God's providence, our people had to flood into the woods. But two brothers were still in their house were horribly tortured. One particular was dreadfully burned and racked and his tongue was torn from his back, was torn from the back of his throat. They both were hacked to death. The others talk about another raid where they actually circled and began to just scream for two hours until they raided and took some of the women and the girls and took them off into foreign lands into back to be slaves in Muslim countries. During the 30-year war and afterwards, it just got worse and worse. But during that time, really, really bad times, they planted 100 communities over Moravia during that time period. That is a heroic response. Let's go to Holland. Three minutes, all right. This will be a very quantum three minutes. All right, so looking at the 80-year war, the Muslims weren't as much up here, but the political things were even worse. Charles V inherited Holland, it was his thing. And in those days, if it was your particular country, it was even worse. And during that time, he wanted to make sure Holland was gonna be handled very much right. So he started in 1522, that time there with Luther, and began to make attacks on the church. And oh, those Dutch Mennonites suffered greatly. And we read through here. And after him, his son, Philip II, began this and began an entire Spanish inquisition against the Anabaptists at the north. And it was terrible times. Even the secular Dutch people has a little saying here that says, I'd rather be Muslim than Catholic. And the entire country was becoming more and more interested in these different things. But remember, the way of success was pursuit. And this is what they did. They began to go out and they didn't go into hiding. They began to share their faith. And one after another, they began to share their faith. Menno Simons writes it this way. I love this quote. At a time when this edict was coming from Charles V, when all these things were terrible, Menno Simons writes, this is what it looks like to be an Anabaptist in his church in this day. Listen, therefore we preach as much as is possible, both by day and by night, in houses and in fields and forests and waste, hither and yon, at home or abroad, in prisons and in dungeons, in water and in fire, on the scaffold and on the wheel. That's a torture wheel. Before lords and princes, through mouth and with pen, with possessions and blood, with life and death, we could wish that we might save all mankind from the jaws of hell, free them from the chains of their sin. And by the gracious help of God, add them to Christ by the gospel of his peace. For this is the true nature of the love which is of God. Wow. So it was hard times, over and over, martyr after martyr of all different things. The Inquisition was coming against them, and the more they would kill them, they would come and do more. Now, as I do this study, I'm going to throw this one little slide in here. How many times have you ever said, well, if we had persecution, then we'd have unity? How many times have you heard that said, all right? Yeah. Okay, I found out when I was doing this study, I challenge you all to do that. Go through your martyr's mirror and look at some of these times, but then look at the times when the major factions happened in all and two. Persecution did not stop splitting. But on the other hand, splitting, here's another thing, if I can say it this way, church problems didn't prevent heroes, all right? On one hand, persecution didn't bring us all together like we all say it does, but on the other hand, just because you have a church problem, you still have people like Dirk Willems faithfully living. So if you go through some hard times, if your young people are experiencing hard times in the church, it's no excuse to be heroic for the faith. They still went forward. Charles V had personal attacks on Menno Simons. He offered great rewards for those who would take him, complete pardon, but he still said, for true evangelical faith cannot lie dormant, but manifests itself in all righteousness and works of love. It clothes the naked, feeds the hungry, consoles the afflicted, shelters the miserable, aids and consoles all the oppressed, returns good for evil, serves those that injure it, pray for those that persecute it. Look at this brother here, Leonhart Bowens. As he went out in this year of this great times of persecution, baptized in record, wrote it down 10,378 people. That's a heroic response to political upheaval that's going on in their time. I was preaching once about to a Hutterite audience about the different things of the mission machine that the early Hutterites were in. It's an interesting response that one of those Hutterite young men said to me. Afterwards, he said, he said, Brother Dean, he said, you know, that's funny. I never knew we did anything good but die well or die good. I knew we died good, but I didn't know we actually did anything. They didn't kill us because we were setting still. Now, that doesn't mean we don't lose these things that we have. And my message on Saturday night is I believe that we have gained some wisdom. I believe there are some things that we have understood through the age and we're not here starting fresh. But I believe that there is a way that we can take this beautiful heritage that I see in front of us here and put it to action with a heroic response again. And then we'll see perhaps some of these things. You know, I wonder sometimes, we hear about young people leaving. We hear about these different things. I wonder if we're destined to lose young people one place or another. The choice we have to make is whether we're going to lose our young people to worldliness or to martyrdom. And I believe that we look, these people were conservative, separated, Christ following, two kingdom Christians. They didn't compromise. But part of that was they were in action, putting the teachings of Christ in action. So I'll end, incredible witness even from the girls and all these. I have some of these in the handout. So I'm gonna give you this final ancient hymn from the early Hutterites, and then I'll close. It puts everything in a beautiful perspective. As God his son was sending into this world of sin, his son is now commanding that we this world should win. Notice the word command. He sends us and commissions to preach the Gospel clear, to call upon all nations to listen and to hear. To thee, O God, we're praying. We're bent to do Thy will. Thy Word we are obeying. Thy glory we fulfill. All people we are telling to mend their sinful way that they might cease rebelling lest judgment be their pay. And if Thou, Lord, desire and should it be Thy will that we taste sword and fire by those who thus would kill, then comfort, pray our loved ones and tell them we've endured and we shall see them yonder eternally secured. Thy Word, O Lord, does teach us and we do understand. Thy promises are with us until the very end. Thou hath prepared a haven. Praise be Thy holy name. We laud Thee, God of haven. Through Christ our Lord, Amen. Amen. Dear Heavenly Father, I do come to You, Lord, and I thank You for this great cloud of witnesses on both sides of this continent and this time period. And Lord, as we see here rumors of wars and rumors of wars and political things and attacks on the church and we see the attacks on our youth and our Lord, I pray, God, I pray, Lord, lift up Your Word and like we heard this morning, lift up the very person of Jesus Christ that we would in all realistic and practical way present that living Jesus Christ on this earth. God, give us the grace, Lord, I pray, sanctify us in Your truth and give us Your Holy Spirit, Lord, to lead us according to Your glory. It's in Jesus' name we pray, Amen. Dean, we'll just take off right from here at your next talk. And you've stimulated our thoughts and our thinking and we're going to say good night now and go home. Last chance, anybody? Question. Thank you. God bless you.