In this sermon, the speaker discusses the importance of Christian singing and introduces a Christian hymn of discipleship. He expresses gratitude to Leonard Gross for bringing this hymn back into English use. The speaker also highlights the relevance of the hymn's message to the present day, emphasizing the need for God's spirit and grace. He then transitions to a discussion about the stages of Christian growth, emphasizing the importance of progressing beyond the initial conversion experience. The speaker uses a diagram to illustrate the stages of growth and emphasizes the need for communities to embrace the higher ethic in order to thrive.

In need of God's Spirit and grace. Do you feel tired, overwhelmed? Just beside the point. Beside the point, okay. Well, it's good to say how we feel sometimes. It doesn't hurt. Alright, well, Chester Weaver, you are a schoolteacher by trade, and how many children do you have? I have eight children, but I'm a schoolteacher by calling. Pardon me. Schoolteacher by calling. I wish I could say I was a landscaper by calling. I really do feel called, but I have to think about that a little bit. Chester, I appreciate you've been involved with all these viewers here in the Anabaptist Identity Conference, and God bless you now as you share, and let's have a prayer. Lord, thank you for Chester. I see him burn his heart in this key, very pivotal ground stone, this corner stone. Lord, I think that this is a key to us to live today in a world that is fragmenting, and that is crying out for help. Help us, Lord, as we learn about this powerful truth. And please empower Brother Chester as he lifts up his voice and unburdens his heart. In Jesus' name, amen. May the spirit of the living God grace us with peace and quietness of heart that we be able to perceive and understand what he has to say. I'm sorry that my speaking voice does not fit the bill. Speak up. We'll try. I'm sorry. What does it take to work? What does it take for communities to work, either in an organized community, such as a Hutterite community, or an unorganized community like most of us here are from? What does it take to work? Well, it takes several things, but the dean was giving some of the big picture. I would like to focus now on a particular item that I think is, that I understand is the key to making this whole thing work. It's also the key to correcting ourselves with the fundamentalism that we were talking about last night. First of all, before I start, I would like to recommend you consider the book that's back there on the one table called Golden Apples and Silver Bowls. This is an Anabaptist gem that was published in 1702, just after what we call the Amish Separation. And one of the most unique things about this book is, we all understand the Doertre Confession. Well, the Doertre Confession had a weakness. And the people on the old Mennonite side decided that they needed to correct some weaknesses in it. And so one of the weaknesses they perceived, there was no article in the Doertre Confession on the Holy Spirit, for example. So they put an article on the Holy Spirit. And also they removed some of the text and added other text. And I would understand that the 19 articles that they came up with is superior to the original Doertre. It's in here. I found it fascinating to take my copy and compare it with a Doertre Confession copy and denote the changes in the two. Now, this book has been out of print for many years, except you can buy it in German. It never went out of print in German that I know of. Mennonite Historical Society in 1999 put it back into print. It was in print for several years and went out of print just recently, well, within the last year. And you could buy one on Amazon for $1,100. But the Mennonite Historical Society had discovered enough interest in this thing to be reprinted, and so it's been reprinted again. And they're in the tables back here. We have plenty of them. There's just a few in the one table, but I have a box of them. 25 more. You need one of these. It only costs $25. Let me illustrate why you need it, in addition to the 19 articles that I talked about before. This is somewhat of a devotional book. It's not a history book. Section 1 has to do with the epistle of and court proceedings against Michael Sattler. Section 2 is a confession of faith, an epistle of Thomas von Imbright. Section 3 is a last will, and an epistle of Sotken Vanden Hout, the Dutch lady. And one of the things she writes is to her child. Section 4, the epistles of Matthias Servais and Conrad Koch. Section 5 is the 19 articles. Section 6 is Christian prayers. Section 7 is the instruction in Christian singing and a Christian hymn of discipleship. And we have Leonard Gross to thank for pushing some of this, and I bless Leonard for doing what it took to bring this back into English use. And another thing that I just find so amazing, in the introduction, the people who put this together said, this is just as persecution was ending. We're saying, we are finding people around us are beginning to look to us to have some answers. And we need to be careful about all that. And it sounds like it was written in the year 2000. It's so relevant to today. Check it out. Also in the book back, table back there in the corner, is for free the antithesis of Job. I might refer to that a little bit more later. The call to Goloshenheit. First of all, we need to define terms. Fundamentalism has been sufficiently defined in my previous topic. Suffice it to say that fundamentalism has been both a bane and a blessing to the Mennonite Church in its effort to combat liberalism. To claim Goloshenheit as the nemesis of fundamentalism, as it states in your program, needs some definition and clarification. Nemesis, as used in this topic, carries the idea of ending the negative consequences that have tended to accompany fundamentalism wherever it has gone. As I'm using the word nemesis, I intend nothing about retributive justice. In other words, I'm not claiming at all that Goloshenheit will or should undo fundamentalism. Fundamentalism with its stand for the virgin birth of Christ, the literal miracles of Christ, the bodily resurrection of Christ, the divine inspiration of the Holy Scripture, and more, has served conservative Mennonites as well, including myself. It has served us well. If fundamentalism had not trained its heavy guns against the weighty onslaught of liberalism when it did, where would we be today? And so we're thankful to Christ for the good that fundamentalism was able to accomplish. But today, in 2015, in a number of ways, conservative Mennonites are standing with their backs to the wall, realizing that something is amiss but are not exactly sure what the problem is. My first topic attempted to locate the problem in history, both in the larger context of Protestantism as well as in our own story. But today, I appeal to conservative Mennonites to own their own problem where it exists. To do so would be much more than half the remedy. But alas, this very afternoon, too many conservative Mennonites have embraced the lie that much of fundamentalism is equal to anabaptism. And that scares me. In other words, too many conservative Mennonites do not know the facts of their own story. And I grieve that. And I dream of the day when Mennonite young people will know their own story and will grasp the significance and not just believe a fundamentalist version of that story. I grew up in the old Mennonite church and I was taught and trained in evangelical theology. I was not taught the essence of anabaptism. The light slowly dawned upon me as I began to read the anabaptist story. And even today, it's easy for me to revert back to my default training. I pray God would graciously shift my entire worldview as well as my default thinking to what the New Testament actually teaches. For me, Christianity, that's focused first on the living word, the person of Jesus Christ. And thank you, Dean, once again. The person of Jesus Christ. Rather than focused first on the Holy Scriptures, which include the person of Jesus Christ, has made the difference between Christianity that's academic and Christianity that's a real relationship with Jesus Christ. And that difference is huge. When churches struggle with their own young people for not buying in to the church's position and mission, it's easy to fault the young people. But maybe the young people discern a very real problem. A problem they're most likely not able to articulate. Maybe, just maybe, they're looking for something genuine. Something divine. Something powerful. Something meaningful. And something deeply satisfying. When churches find their members consumed with materialism, just maybe those members are seeking fulfillment because the real living person of Christ has not been held before them. When churches are consumed with criticism, controversy, and bickering, most likely Christ is not immediately present. Onlookers easily note Christ's absence. When individual Christians feel exhausted with all the discipline necessary to keep up with all that's expected to maintain a good image, Christ is most likely saying, Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. When people are abused verbally and emotionally abused in the name of Christ, He is definitely absent. And He's weeping while watching from a distance. When plank-obstructed eyes are trying to find moats in other people's eyes, Christ is nowhere around. Christ Jesus teaches us first to think and say, I have the plank, you have the moat. That's a kingdom principle. It's not natural. I personally have been abused a number of times in some rather significant ways. And my guess is that you have also been abused at one or more times in your life. Of course, Jesus Christ Himself has suffered the greatest abuse of all. He understands every abuse that we experience. And He is always there beside the abused. Never the abuser. And every time, He ministers grace and compassion and comfort and courage and healing to the abused. And at the same time, He teaches forgiveness for abusers. That's the way of Christ. And I need to say at this point that fundamentalism has taught conservative Mennonites how to be spiritual abusers and feel good about it. Fundamentalism has taught us militancy, not mercy. Fundamentalism has taught us doctrine, not deliverance. Fundamentalism has taught us rigidity, not rest. And for these sins, we must repent. Jesus said He came for the sick. For people who recognize their own needs. Those who are well, the Pharisees, do not come for help. For decades, fundamentalism has taught Bill Gothard how to abuse people and still be considered godly, holy, and untouchable. But finally, God is not mocked. And Almighty God is dealing with Bill and others now. And we beseech His mercy upon that whole ongoing story. And that story is not finished. The question before us is, how should we respond to abuse? The question is not primarily how to prevent abuse, although that's an important question itself. But since abuse will happen in this fallen world, the larger and better response is the call to Golosanite. And I would like to spend quite a bit of the rest of the time now in the overheads. I guess it's dark enough back here for that. Okay, could we have these center lights out, please? Thank you. All right, this first overhead says, The Power of Powerlessness. We have forgotten this teaching of Jesus Christ. Jesus says, If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto me. What does He mean by that? What is the power of powerlessness? You see, whenever we box ourselves in with all the right formulas, all the right doctrines, all the right interpretations, all the right practices, we have everything nuanced just perfectly. Human power is at work. But God restrains Himself. He stands outside the box. He basically is a gentleman who says, Okay, if you people think you have it and you want to do it that way, go ahead. God is very much of a gentleman. He'll never force Himself on anybody. So He stands back. And He lets us run into the wall like we're running into the wall today. But if we remove the box and let God do it His way, even though it doesn't seem to work in our human minds, if we become humanly powerless, God goes to work. There's something divine here. I can hardly explain this and put this into words. This is your handout. I get this from the book entitled Amish Peace. It has a whole chapter on Golosanite. We would like to spend some time on this. This word, Golosanite, is not an English word and there's no English word that's parallel to this. This word, Golosanite, has much packed into it. The most common way to understand it is in terms of yieldedness. But listen, it's not just yieldedness. It's this package all together packed in one word. Yieldedness, humility, calmness, composure, meekness, aplomb, tranquility, imperturbability, serenity, poise, sedateness, letting go, the opposite of self-assertion, a gentle spirit, submitting to God's will, brokenness, esteems others above self. It's the union and agreement of the inner experience with outward response. But get the last one. It's caught, not taught. I asked some of my Amish neighbors, my older Amish neighbors, about this word a couple years ago. I said, what do you have to say about Golosanite? And one man said, you know, I've heard of that word. He says, I'm not sure what it is. I've heard of it. What was amazing to me is the older Amish practiced this among their peoplehood experience even though they've forgotten some of the word. Now they don't practice all of Golosanite, but they have something about Golosanite that many of the rest of us don't have. And something we can learn from them. And if I'm not getting all this right, if somebody who understands Golosanite better than me, please talk to us at the question and answer period to get the matter straight. For in Golosanite, there's two dimensions. There is a relationship with God and I, the believer in God, that's the vertical relationship. But there's a horizontal relationship between believer and believer. Now the Anabaptist said there's no man in Christ apart from his brother. It's easy for Protestantism and Evangelicalism to talk about God and I. It's easy to talk that way. But how does brother relate to brother in an ongoing working relationship that Brother Dean was talking about in community? Something must be present. You see the Evangelical community says I'll let you alone, you let me alone, and we'll be okay. You stay out of my hair, I'll stay out of your hair, and everybody benefits. And that's not what the Gospel of Jesus teaches. Now if we have Golosanite working on two dimensions here in our vertical relationship with God and our horizontal relationship with each other, the results are security, protection, strength, resources, continuity, and more. But if there is no Golosanite, look at that, a dot. Pretty small. The result is in the absence of Golosanite there's exposure, there's aloneness, there's weakness, vulnerability, and fragmentation. This is a quote from Philip Spiner. Golosanite, the nemesis of argumentation. He says, not all disputation is useful and good. How often the disputants themselves are persons without the spirit and faith, filled with carnal wisdom drawn from the Scriptures but not instructed by God. What is to be expected from such disputants? How often is unholy fire brought into the sanctuary of the Lord? That is, an unholy intent directed not to God's glory but to man's. They call forth His curse and nothing is achieved by such disputing. An opponent is so annoyed by this that although he may not be able to answer, the manner of proceeding against him, the carnal emotions, the insults, and the like, hinder the hoped-for conversion. Now I have lived enough years in a more loose kind of community that most of us here function in and I know how easy it is to fall into argumentation as we work out how community is to move forward. But he is saying here that if we're into argumentation and trying to prove a point, we're done. We're done. There's no way forward. There's no Galasinite here. By nature, we're self-centered. We want it our way. We're selfish. Everything comes into me so that I can advance. I can rise. Sounds somewhat satanic, doesn't it? Whereas in Galasinite, you notice that I exist in humility and brokenness so that I can serve my family, so that I can serve my community. And the community might be including hurting people. It's been said that hurt people hurt people. Well, Jesus wants to be a part of the healing so that at least partially healed people can minister to hurting people and allow the redemptive grace of Christ to work there. There's something about being able to be ministered to by a person who has experienced the same thing we have that is so healing. And I'm not talking about Jesus Christ. That has its place. But humans who have gone through the same thing we have and survived and prospered. That's healing. See, in the kingdoms of this world who seek self-actualization through wealth, connection, and education, various people rise to various heights in that self-actualization effort. Of course, the world honors the people who have risen high. It looks down on the people who haven't gotten very far. But in Golan Heights, in the kingdom of Christ, Christ reigns where self is surrendered in brotherhood. Where we are in Christ with our brother. Redeeming our brother. Not that we have any blood to shed for him, although sometimes we do. But we enter into life with him. Hurt with him. Joy with him. Work with him. Serve with him. Cry with him. But when we have Golan Heights failure, it's like this brotherhood down here. One of these members gets cancer. Malignant cancer. Somehow self begins to grow. And just like cancer cells grow and interfere with other cells and eventually kill the organism, that's what happens when Golan Heights is absent in any community. Did you hear me? Any community. Whether it's an open or closed community. Golan Heights failure means the death of that community. Now I would like to change the focus just a little bit here to help us understand some practical things and how this works. Now this little diagram I used in Anabaptist Identity Conference in Florida a couple years ago, so some people might recognize this. It's the stages of growth. Under the feet of this is a non-born-again experience. So everything above here, the bottom of the feet, is we're going to say some stage in Christian experience. And in this group sitting here today, every one of us are on either stage 1, 2, 3, or 4. So we're all here. Now stage 1, we're going to say, is like the carnal stage. Like Paul says, I'm so sorry. I wish I could be interactive with you. I wish I could talk to you and have questions. I realize this is after lunch and you're getting sleepy. And I'll try to do what I can, but I can't talk to you in an interactive way. In stage 1, the carnal stage, is where we begin. Many times we're up and we're down. There's a lot of flesh we're dealing with. Apostle Paul talks about are you not carnal when there's all these divisions and so on among you. But stage 2 is the sacral stage. This is what fundamentalism is all about. Stage 2 where doctrines are important. Orthodoxy is important. Rules are important. Standards are important. Ordinances are important. And Jesus does give us some physical outward things to do. And there is absolutely no living body that does not have some kind of outward organized form. So this is. It has its place. But just as the people in stage 1 begin to realize there's something more than carnal Christianity and they move into stage 2 because they perceive it's above. The people in stage 2 are above me, so I want to move into that. Once they're in that, they realize there's still something more. And so they move up into stage 3, which is the most dangerous stage of all. And there's several parts I'd like to point out here. The first one is, in this question stage, when we begin to ask questions about stage 2, this is especially true for young people, sometimes when people raise this question, they're told to shut up. Just do it. Don't ask any questions. I don't know why either. We just do it. That is bad news. Bad news. The second question here. We seek answers when we ask questions. We can either get good answers, Christ's answers, answers according to reality, or we can get the world's answers. And many times, people who have asked questions have not gotten good answers and they have left for the world. Sometimes they leave for the world in the form of religion. It's just more of some kind of liberal church where you can have flesh and spirit together. We'll just leave that. The third area where we raise questions is the questions that relate to integrity. And I don't have time right now to deal with this, but I've been working with young people for a while already, and I know that this is extremely important. I cannot overemphasize this. I'll just read down over this and discipline myself not to talk about it. Integrity means truth-telling with no spin. Just saying it like it is. Being single-minded, not double-minded. Integrity means keeping commitments. It means not cheating. It means not shading the truth. It means being objective and fact-oriented. It means being non-prejudiced. I can't help myself, so I'm going to stop right here. I come from the south, from Texas. I came up here in 2008, about seven years ago. Down south, the traditional prejudice is against blacks. And if a black man swims at a white man's swimming pool, you've got to drain the water out before anybody else can swim in it. And we smile at that. And so I came up here to northern Indiana, and we're not prejudiced up here. I was here two days until I discovered in northern Indiana that prejudice is against Amish. It's Amish prejudice. And I'll stop right there. Integrity means being fair, impartial. Integrity means no insinuation and no innuendo. Integrity means being consistent. Integrity means honoring our promises even if it hurts. Integrity means keeping confidences. Integrity means being guileless with no hypocrisy. It means being true to who I am with no pretense. Now, when little children come into the world in their innocence, we'll say they enter the picture at this point. But they're bent to evil, and they fall. Their human nature causes them to fall into the sins of the flesh, such as immorality and theft and all those little fleshly things, or sins of the spirit, such as jealousy, covetousness, and there's a whole bunch more there. Okay, so they get converted. They come into stage one. They go into stage two. And stage two meets them where they used to be. I've taught school long enough to know that one of the primary concerns of a school-aged child is whether something is fair or not. Okay? There must be justice. And they can tell if something's right or wrong. They're very sensitive about that. Okay, but Christian growth does not stop there. It goes through to stage three, and it goes on to stage four into the higher ethic. Now this is where Anabaptism's forte is. This is what we have missed for so long. This is where Golosanite is. You can't do Golosanite in stage one. You can't do Golosanite in stage two. You wonder about Golosanite in stage three. You become empowered for Golosanite in stage four. Before I take this off, notice also at stage four we have such things as forgiveness, reconciliation, integrity, humility, and more. Now on this stage four, before we get into stage four, before we can move there, we begin to get some answers to our questions. But we realize how are we going to get there? And brothers and sisters, I would like to emphasize this. What we're talking about here is the divine work of God. It's not something you dream yourself into. It's not something you pull yourselves up by your own bootstraps. It's something that's the work of God, a divine work in our souls. For example, if we realize that God is calling us up in our growth, we realize that there's dimensions of our Christian experience we've not gotten to yet. The first response we have is, I will by my determination step up. But you know, that's the weakest sort of power we have. It's the very weakest. Now we can say we're going to have some group accountability. We will together pull each other up and hold each other accountable. Sounds good. It helps a little. But it's still not enough. There's empowerment that happens somehow. And this is a mystery I cannot explain. Where we surrender in Golosanite to the living Christ, to Holy Spirit power, and somehow God reaches down and gets a hold of us and lifts us up with unlimited transcendent power. And everything that comes to push us down, such as abuse, becomes power to step up. The things that would destroy us become our strength. What are the blocks that stone us? We step on. God is present. This is why the Anabaptists changed the course of Western history. They didn't set out to change the course of Western history, but just by rising as they allowed God to do His work in their souls, by simply being obedient to Him, He used them to change the course of Western history. What could happen today if we would allow God to do the same thing with us? You see, if we're down here in stage 2, preoccupied with rules and standards, with rituals and ordinances, with observable practices, with Orthodox theology, which is where fundamentalism is, some of these things are enforceable short of coercion. But it always generates this question, questions like, what's wrong with? Listen, brothers and sisters, if you hear young people, whoever, who begin to use these words very often, what's wrong with? Well, what's wrong with? What's wrong with? Then you are knowing, or they are stating, that they're in stage 2. Stage 2 asks that kind of question. Now, if we skip over stage 3, go up here to stage 4, look, we're preoccupied with Golosanite, forgiveness, the golden rule. How many times are we allowed to treat other people better than ourselves, or as ourselves? How many cups of cold water? Dean, in your congregation, what's your limit of cups of cold water in one day that your members are allowed to give? No limit! How many times are your people allowed to do the Good Samaritan work in one day, Dean? No limit! How many times are your people allowed to forgive each other, David? No limit! The disciples said, well, seven times? Seventy times seven? The whole point is, there's no limit to forgiveness. How many times can we be abused and it's the limit? There is no limit. Every stone that comes upon us is an opportunity to step up. And so we overcome evil with good. Time after time after time after time because the living Christ is living inside of us. The law of God is written in our hearts. And He goes to work. You see, we're beyond self. It's the active work of Christ in us. We're not just dealing with death to self which is passive. We're beyond that. We're proactively working in the kingdom, building His kingdom. You know, this generates this kind of question. What's right with or what else can I do? In our church right now, we're developing a Hands of Hope program where we're trying to find ways we can go out into the community and help people who cannot be helped. They're not served by some kind of government agency. It might be just to read to somebody or to take somebody to the doctor or to fix something. There's no limit. The people in Kansas have already been doing this. They've been doing it for five or six years. It is so big that they are actually paying a man to direct this to spend 30 hours a week just giving direction. He doesn't do the work. He assigns it to people in the church. There's no limit. Where have we been in our communities? All we do is build up our own empires and get wealthier and wealthier and wealthier and farther and farther away from God. What could happen if we would go out into our communities and serve people like this? This stuff is unenforceable. You can't get your hands around this stuff. It's where the power of God is at work. But it's the spontaneous byproduct of God's love working in us. This is where the early Anabaptists lived and worked. This is why they had the power that they had. In the book Joy and Submission, I get this quote. American individualism clashes with the Anabaptist theme of Golosanite or yieldedness to God and the church. Without a good understanding of Golosanite, voluntary church order is impossible. Therefore, when the Mennonites embraced individualism, church order lost its voluntary principles and became rule-based. How much power is there? You think about that. Living the Sermon on the Mount in a practical way is living powerfully in the world. The first beatitude of blessed are the poor in spirit, or we could say blessed is the person who understands his own neediness. Jesus says there, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. But that's not natural. You have the problems. I don't. I've got it together. You ought to do it like Me. That's the opposite of the first beatitude. The last beatitude says, And again, Jesus says for those people, theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Right there is where He is. And in between those two beatitudes, Jesus says, Or we could say, Those are powerful words. This is the way of Christ. And more could be said there. God's way is best, I will not murmur. Although the end I may not see. Where He leads, I'll meekly follow. God's way is best. It's best for me. And it's also best for you. I'm convinced that much of the way of Christ has been lost among us. Lost already in past generations, but not all of it. In the past 125 years, the old Mennonite church had attempted to combat modern religious liberalism by using the fundamentalist strategy. She tried to correct. I'm sorry. She tried to put the correct doctrine in the correct boxes and place the boxes in correct rows. Christianity was tamed in the process and domesticated into a belief system accompanied by some religious practices. And I raise the question, how much power is that? And if I may say it in terms of my overhead, she stepped from stage four down into stage two and insisted stage two is the way to go. And it's a mistake. And we've got to deal with that. We've got to repent of that and go back to the higher ethic. Those men fought valiantly. I don't want to cast any reflection upon anybody. We do the best we can with the light we have. I bless God for some of those people who combated liberalism. The story's all written. Gospel versus gospel. There's another book. I didn't hold it up over here. It's Vision, Doctrine, and War. It's in Men and Ladies' Experience in America. The story is written. And if you read that story, you can see that something has been misguided. And so, in conclusion, as an aid to thinking about this, I would like to distribute those antitheses of Job back there. I want you to each help yourself to one of those booklets written in 1949. Jeff Haynes of Haynes Printing is making these available at no cost. This conference. If you want to thank him, if he's here, find him. Thank him. Please read that book prayerfully and listen carefully to what the Spirit of God is saying. Can we have the center lights on, please? Marvin Kaufman from Leon, Iowa. You said, Brother Chester, that stage two, they moved down to stage two, and that is not the way to go. But at the same time, I think you would see some value in the observable practices, the structure of stage two. How do we maintain that and at the same time move into stage four? Thank you, Brother Marvin. That's a very good question. Does Jesus still teach baptism? Should a person still be baptized? Should we practice communion? Should we wash feet? Of course. Should churches have standards? Of course. But that's not the end of it. In every normal congregation, you have people at all these places at the same time, but a normal way to think is, let's move on, brothers. Let's go on into better things. Let's not get stagnated here. Nor here. Nor get stuck here. Get good answers so we can get into kingdom work here. Does that answer your question, Marvin? Brother Marvin says he's not sure how to do it. Brother Marvin, this is a wonderful statement. You have just expressed the first beatitude. Blessed are the poor in spirit. We don't like this. We don't like to be in desperate situations. We want to have it all figured out. But this is part of what Christianity is. It's coming up against things that we don't know what to do about. And then we cry out to God because we don't have any other answers. And that's exactly what he wants us to do. I'm Theron Schlabach. I'm from Goshen, Indiana. I come from, frankly, some different circles than most people, I guess, in this room. And where I come from, we've talked about Golosinite. But there is some resistance. And I'll let you guess what I'm talking about. Some resistance because of the question, How do you advise Golosinite when some people are abused without giving aid and comfort to the abusers? For that reason, it's a very live question. And some people really rejecting the Golosinite principle, I think maybe. Well, I'll let you answer it. Very good question. I talked about my responsibility to accept and deal with the abuse that I get. Am I saying that that should not be shared or reported where it needs to be reported? No. If there's a sexual molester, that needs to be reported to people who can deal with it. I guess I'm free to say this is public. In John Howard Yoder's case, some people made some attempts to do that, but it didn't get anywhere, unfortunately. If there is an abuser around, that abuser needs to be faced with the abuse. I'm a teacher, and little children are some of the worst abusers there are. Teenagers abuse each other. They pick on each other. Okay, so we tend to think the abusers, the bullies are the bad guys. And I have to teach these little boys and girls, look, if somebody comes and abuses you and bullies you, stand up to him. What's up? Back off. Now, you say that's not Golosinite. I think it is, if it's done in the right spirit. Golosinite is not just simply accepting everything. Okay, everything, I'll just take it all, just all. That's not what it is. I think there's a balance here. I'm not sure if I'm answering all your questions there. David? David Cady from Chicago again. Dear brother, you mentioned, you made the statement, I think, the Anabaptists have changed the course of Western history. Now, I am a product of public education, at least formally, and I have a master's degree in history, but I never heard anything about this. Could you please explain it? All right, that's a fair question. I've painted a broad stroke there. But this whole concept of separation of church and state was pioneered by the Anabaptist people. It was picked up and worked with by other people. It's not that the Anabaptists got a hold of the whole course of history and changed it, no. But the concept they pioneered. The sad thing is that most of our young people don't know that, and when I teach Anabaptist history, that's one of the things I want them to come across away from the class understanding, that we are not a people that was put in a corner someplace that just basically survived on our own barely. We made a significant contribution. Our forefathers made a significant contribution to Western history. Is that enough, David? Okay, I will talk to you some more if you would like to meet, too, in person. Daniel Hershberger, Kinsman, Ohio. And basically what you're saying here is we need to be Christlike and realize that Christ was not a permissive wimp. Is that what you're saying? When Jesus was here, he was not a wimp. And also you're saying that we shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt in both hands. That's something else you're saying here, right? That's right. But whenever we throw, we don't throw hard balls. We throw balls that other people can catch. You understand what I'm saying? Elias Martin, I'm here in Goshen. Thank you, Chester, for explaining on Goloson Heights. I'd asked you last night. You said you'd give a talk on it today. I think you did well. Thank you. Keith Schaum here, local. I think we have the wrong view of meekness somewhat in our circles. The Bible view of meekness was strength under control. That's right. Not of a wimp. That's right. The Hebrew picture of meekness would be of a stallion horse that's trained. Yes. And that's a beautiful picture of meekness. That's right. Thank you. Dean Taylor, Altona community in Minnesota. Brother Chester, first of all, I just want to appreciate that this message is a blessing. And also I want to say I appreciate seeing this reflected in your life through the years. I've known you and I've really just been blessed to see your example of living out Goloson Heights. One thing I want to say is when we were over in Germany a few years ago with Eddie Klein and Benuel and David and some of us over there, at one of the hotels I noticed the lady spoke good English. And so I asked her, do you know the word Goloson Heights? And she said yes. And I said, well, could you define it? And she gave some of these words like this. And I said, well, let me ask you, today in Germany do you use this word commonly? And she said, oh, no. And I said, well, why not? And she said, because Germans are not Goloson Heights. I thought that was funny. A friend of mine gave me a picture of a new car. And right above the new car it said Goloson Heights. I'm not sure if I can explain everything that it meant. Do you have an idea? David. David Bersow from Chambersburg, PA. No, what I was telling Dean was I asked a German on that ad, and he told me what it meant. I'm not sure I remember it, though. It wasn't what I thought it was saying. I think that Goloson Heights meant the car did everything for you, and it was like perfection is what he explained. John has one. My name is John Martin. I asked about that advertisement, and I was told it meant that you should completely surrender to that car. I'm Steve Coleman from Salem, West Virginia. And I had a question about do you believe that the church is supposed to be a gathering of people that have experienced Goloson Heights together? And then the follow-up question is do you believe that if there's one person practicing Goloson Heights within a body, will it draw the entire body? What hinders us? Good question. That's a very realistic kind of question. The quick answer for your second question is no. There needs to be more than one person practicing Goloson Heights. If only one person is practicing Goloson Heights, he'll take a lot of abuse, and that's probably where it will end. But if there's a number of people practicing Goloson Heights, I don't know what the percentage needs to be, but then God goes to work in interesting ways. But in every church, there are some churches probably who have zero people at stage four who are practicing Goloson Heights. Many churches have people who are in the question stage. And still, that's a bad situation to be in. The only real safe situation to be in church-wise is you're in a church where there's a number of adults, brothers and sisters, who are practicing Goloson Heights. Okay. We got more questions than we do time. I'm not sure. I see Leonard's hand. I'll get his hand on the way out. Let me just pick up an announcement here. Sorry. Just an announcement. The parking lot overflow has become a concern. It's a good problem, but it was suggested, and we're suggesting that the local people, if it would work out, could carpool and cut down on the number of vehicles. With friends or if it's this evening or tomorrow afternoon, evening, even the Hoover Lumber Yard could be used to carpool and cut down on the congestion out here. Again, thanks to you all for coming. It's not a complaint. It's just a concern. Thank you. Okay. Leonard, your name, where you're from. Leonard Gross from Goshen, Indiana. It's interesting. I've studied the term Goloson Heights back there in my Basel days in Switzerland. I think it's correct that the word is not in the Luther translation in German, but that it comes from the Swiss Bible, German Bible. I think it comes from Sirach, one of the apocryphal, which the Anabaptists used equally with other Old Testament books. Something like this, that gold is purified in the oven of Goloson Heights. Interesting. I think that is where the Hutterites, I think, picked this up. In Hutterite history, this is a very strong motif. I see. Hans Denk was a German, and he used the word Goloson Heights. It's not all Germans who would be adverse to that. Hans Denk, I think, lived up to that. He's the one who said, Niemand kann Jesum wahrlich nachfolgen, es sei denn, er ihm nachfolge im Leben. No one can truly follow Jesus unless he or she follows him in life, and of course, and so on. I think that's some background that might be helpful here. Thank you. Appreciate that very much. And the Hutterites certainly were anything but wimps as regard Goloson Heights. Thank you. And I would like to say publicly that I owe Brother Leonard here a public debt. He has helped me with some of my presentations, including the one I gave on fundamentalism. So thank you, Leonard, for your help. I just wanted Brother Leonard to share that quote again. The quote from Hans Denk? Oh. Oh, from Sirach. Okay. That gold is purified in the oven of Goloson Heights. So this is in the Froschauer Bible, which is the Swiss Bible, from the 1531 is the most, is best known, but there were earlier editions. So that's probably where the word came from in this regard. Thank you.