This sermon delves into the historical events surrounding key figures like Zwingli, Hubmeier, and Marpeck, highlighting their struggles, recantations, and ultimate convictions. It explores the importance of baptism, the order of faith, and the significance of martyrdom in the Anabaptist movement, leading up to the formation of the Schleiheim Confession.

Well, first of all, speaking of communion and all those things, I wanted to say whatever happened to Zwingli. We didn't finish the story because we were looking primarily at the Swiss Brethren, or the martyrs there. But the question is what happened to Zwingli, and it's sort of interesting. There in the picture that you see there, I put on your handouts there to the right, is right there from the door of the Grossmünster. On the door of the Grossmünster, there's all these plates of Reformation history, and that's one of what's called the Marburg Colloquy. So as the Reformation gets ongoing and everything, it's growing in the German areas, it's growing in the Swiss areas, and Zwingli, wanting to try to do what he could to unite everybody together, tries to unite, of course, with Martin Luther. Martin Luther being the biggest name even in their day. It is now, but even in their day. So, and he agreed with just about everything with Luther, except for one point. What happens to that piece of bread at communion? And it was a huge issue to them. It may seem like a very small issue to us, but it was a huge issue to them. The Roman Catholic view was a view, we talked about this a little bit ago, was transubstantiation. And in transubstantiation, they believed, okay, it still looks like bread, it may look like bread, but it's really not bread at all anymore. They used sort of a metaphysics-eyed concept of everything has a substance to it, and the accidents are what we actually see. But the real things in life are what's invisible. And so, if you, if I were to change, Jacob Bowers has changed you to an eagle, but you still were, I'm still seeing you walk around as Jacob, you would really be an eagle, but your accidents, what you appear to be is Jacob. And so they would say what this actually becomes is Jesus Christ, and it just looks like bread. There are stories during the Reformation where people were stealing a host and running and trying to do some kind of experiments on it to figure out what was really happening chemically and all that, but it was a big issue. Luther was a little bit different. He had to be a little different and everything. He believed in something called consubstantiation. And con, you know, like the word with, that it's still bread, but Jesus is there with it physically, but it's with the bread, so he came up with consubstantiation. And now Zwingli's view. Zwingli viewed that we partook of it in a spiritual way, that there's no physical presence of Christ there in the communion. I found here, Luther regarded Zwingli as a sharma, a fanatic. All these changes that he was making, he was worried that he was more closer to the radical reformers. Luther insisted that they had to take the Lord's words, this is my body, literally. Zwingli maintained that this has to be understood as a metaphor, like I am the vine, or I'm the bread of life. After the resurrection, Christ ascended bodily into heaven and sits at the right hand of God. Christ is omnipresent only in his divinity, not in his humanity. The spirit gives life and the flesh is of no avail. Luther would argue some of the things, like remember back to our council periods? You can't divide the spirit and the body. If you get Christ spiritually, you have to get him physically. And so they were arguing back to the councils in some of those debates, like the Nestorian debates, and saying, well, you're a heretic because of, you know, some of these things that you're saying about the dividing of Christ's humanity from his divinity. And they were, again, that focus was going off in a very, it was going off in a very fast, it was going off very fast. But, they needed to come to an agreement. The Catholics were now starting to get their troops together. They were coming against, they were coming against them, and so they had this conference, and it was called the Marburg Colloquy. Remember, Luther was in the Marburg Castle. So, to discuss these differences, Luther and Zwingli met and held a debate. The Marburg Colloquy was a meeting at Marburg Castle in Germany, which attempted to solve the disputes between Martin Luther and Zwingli over the real presence of Christ in the Lord's Supper. It took place on October 4th, 1529. All right, it's one of my kind of favorite little scenes in history, because, you know, so they're there in this thing, and they're agreeing, I forgot how many, I think it was maybe 15 points, and they agreed to 14. But on this, they wouldn't agree. So, there's some different stories on how this happened, when he wrote it, and all that, but at some point in it, it seems that most of the, most of the, most of the people, most of the accounts of this history say that he took a piece of chalk and wrote on the table, when they began to discuss this, and he wrote it out. So, okay, we're going to discuss this with Zwingli, and he's going to try to keep arguing for a spiritual presence in the communion, and Luther kept banging back on the table, this is my body. And so, as they kept discussing, one would, Zwingli would give, well, what about this, what about that, what about this, Luther just kept coming back, this is my body, and he wouldn't let up. Apparently, they got into name calling, they were calling each other names, they did apologize a little later for calling each other names, they came back to it, and apparently, at the end, and Zwingli was, Zwingli was terribly sad about this, because he loved Luther, and he wanted to have this agreement with him, but he was also a man of conviction, and at the end, he wanted to shake hands, and Luther wouldn't even shake his hand, and they departed as not on the best terms. I was looking for, there's a drawing, I was looking for it, where Luther's going like this, where he's scared to death to even touch Zwingli's hand, because of this heresy that Zwingli is getting into over this issue. So what do you think? What happens in communion? What does it mean, you know, what does it mean when it's just a spiritual presence? What do those things mean? Does that mean, if it's just a symbol, does it really matter what happens? You know, I heard someone argue once that we make a little too light of the way we look at what happens when we come together and have this communion. Somebody made the argument once, okay, let's say, for instance, that, this is terrible, but let's say, for instance, as a young man, and you know how we wanted to go visit the Latin Rite, but you wanted to go and see what satanic worship looks like, okay? And so you said, Dean, I'm going to go look at the satanic worship. Of course, I'd be very against that. But if you went in there, and then you not only were their presence, you wanted to watch a sacrifice. So you watch the sacrifice, and while they're there, they're doing all these little terrible things, and then you decide, you know, I'm even going to partake of that sacrifice. And you partake of that sacrifice. Now let me ask you, do you think that you would be in any way actually affected spiritually by the partaking of a satanic sacrifice? Yeah. Now we all know there's nothing, they have no power to do something in God. They're just demon worshipers. They're whatever the case. But they're so, it's interesting that we attribute to something like that, that it can affect us spiritually, but I'm afraid that with our communion, and often sometimes our baptism, we make so light of this that we do this out of obedience, that we've lost the fact of the mystery of what we're actually doing. And so I just take this as a moment to say something about it, that yeah, we do it, we don't take this kind of strict theology into our understanding of this, and I'm very glad for that, that we don't get into this kind of strict theology. The early church, they certainly thought there was something happening, and different ones, Pilgrim Marpeck would have a more appreciative of something deep happening in that. Same way with baptism. Sometimes I explain to baptism, how do I explain what happens, and I purposely don't get into doctrinal dogma, I don't get into dogma over these ordinances or sacraments or whatever you call them. I think because you end up with something like this Marbury Colloquy. But just on baptism, I heard somebody once make the argument, and I use this often time, is whatever, what happens in baptism? And you think of even with marriage, where a couple who at this time are two totally different people, they go into the church or wherever, before God, say a few promises to each other, and from then on they leave one flesh for the rest of their life. Something powerful is happening that goes beyond our understanding. And the whole thinking of baptism, you know, I pondered it, and to try to get to a science of it, I think you get into a big debate. Growing up a Baptist, our big opponent was the Church of Christ. The Church of Christ would make this big point on baptismal regeneration. And we would quote our scriptures, and they would quote their scriptures, and back and forth. Neither one of us, I believe, at least the people that I was speaking to, neither one of us understood being saved by grace through faith, and that God uses these different things sometimes to give us channels of grace or blessings in that way. Well, somebody gave me the analogy once, and I've used it often times when I've preached at baptisms, was, okay, here it is. In the World War II, when Winston Churchill was over the prime minister, and the Nazis were about to take over England, it looked like the Nazis were going to take over England, and everybody was panicking. This is the beginning of the end. This is it. This is all over. It's the beginning of the end. Well, Winston Churchill, in his beautiful prose that he always had, he came to the microphone, and he said, people of England, symptoms of the effect, people of England, I don't believe this is the beginning of the end, but it is the end of the beginning. And somebody gave that analogy at a baptism sermon once, and I really appreciated it. And I've used it, the idea that this whole concept of coming before God and the sealing of baptism and all these things, I would never say that I'm enlightened at the baptismal font or whatever you call it, but to just put these things into empty symbolism just out of obedience may be going a little far, my opinion. Anybody, any thoughts on that? Just to ponder that. We get into this also a little bit now in the order of things with Hubmeier coming up. So the Marburg Colloquy. It was an interesting point of history. All right. I wrote number two, how did Zwingli die? At the Battle of Capelle. At this time, the Catholics were very upset about all these things that were happening in Zurich and all the things that were happening in the Reformation, and so they eventually declared war on them and came in two different battles. The first battle Zwingli was at, and at the second battle he was at. And if you see that plaque I have at the top right of your paper, I took that picture while I was there, and that is from his little parish house, which is just a stone throw down the street from the Grossmunster. And that's what's still to this day there on the top of his house there. Any German speakers here? All right, Lucas, give us a translation. Capelle. All right. Well said. He died for his faith. And so he went into this battle, still a young man, 47 I think he was, and he died there. Heinrich Bullinger, who was his successor, wrote this in his chronicles talking about the last moments of his death. He says, while the Catholic forces were looting the bodies of the dead and dying, they found Zwingli still alive. Laying on his back, with his hands together as if he was praying, and his eyes looking upward to heaven. He was stricken with a mortal wound so that they asked whether a priest should be fetched to hear his confession. At that point, one of the sacraments were that a priest hears you right before you die and he says, you're forgiven. Instant, instant, make sure you're forgiven. So they asked him, so people were very scared, make sure you get this absolution at the end of your life. They encouraged him to call upon Mary, the mother of God, and upon his saints. When Zwingli again shook his head, the Catholics cursed him and said he was one of the obstinate, cantankerous heretics and should get what he deserved. One of the Catholic captains then drew his sword and thrust Zwingli through. When the body was identified, there was a tremendous shouts of joy throughout the Catholic camp. It was decided, and here's what they did to him. They took him, and here's what they did to his body. It was decided to quarter his body. Does anybody know what quartering a body means? What does it mean? Cut it up into four pieces. Drawing quarters, they do it by horses. Here they wanted to cut him up into four pieces and burn those portions. Then they also threw the fire. They had a fire, so they took the four pieces and burned them. Then they took the entrails and the pig offal, which is pig poop, and put that in a fire and took the ashes and mixed it together with this pig stuff and then scattered it so that there would be no formal burial of this great reformer, Zwingli. They wanted to make sure he was gone, I guess. Wow! And that's the way Zwingli ended his life. So what do you think about that plaque? He died for his faith. He died for his faith. If you have your Bibles, turn it to Revelation 13, 12, and definitely bring your Bibles tomorrow. In Revelation 13, 12, I've pondered this passage several times, and it gives the end of life, the end of time, this great persecution time, an indication of how we would know who the true Christians are and who they are not. And I find it interesting. See what you think. In Revelation 13, 12, excuse me, I'm going to back it up to verse 7. And it was given unto him to make war with the saints and to overcome them. And power was given him over all kindred and tongues and nations. And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him whose name was not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. If any man has an ear, let him hear. So now listen. If anyone has an ear, let him hear. He, during this terrible time when things are going crazy and the Antichrist is out, if anyone has an ear, let him hear. He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity. He that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Hear, this is what I just said, is the patience. Or another translation is the perseverance and the faith of the saints. Interesting passage, isn't it? You know, during times, if we can somehow turn Jesus' words, something as easy as love your enemies into a justification for atomic warfare, we've missed it. The chapter before that, or the chapter next, there also gives two other times, only one other time that it talks about this idea that in the end times, how do you know who the true church is? It said two times there. In 14, that was 13, and in 14 it says it again. Here is the patience of the saints. Here are they, this is Revelation 14, 12. Here are they that keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. Interesting. The three marks that the Revelation writer spoke of is a people, that number one, they keep the commandments of God. They're a holy people. And the faith of Jesus. The teachings and the faith of Jesus Christ, and they persevere in the fact that they know that he who led them into captivity leads them to captivity. He who kills with a sword must be killed with a sword. So here we can see an example, a sad example of what happens if we live by the sword. If we live by the sword. So what happened to the Swiss brethren after the death of Mons and Grebel? I have just a few words here in your cup and the cross that I thought were pretty good. So let's open that up to cup and the cross, page 75. And I'm going to particularly take you to this excellent map that they have on 79. On page 75, Common Grebel and Felix Mons, the two original Anabaptist leaders, were sons of Zurich, and the first Swiss brethren meeting took place there. However, persecution finally exterminated the Anabaptist church there. There was always remnants of people, and we're going to talk about that Monday when I start talking about building up. I'm going to talk about the Amish on Monday. And so there was, in this area, always scattered groups. But as a big group of people like we see in St. Gall, how it was and how we saw it in different places, there was no way during this persecution time that you could have that. Persecution also quickly suppressed Anabaptism in the nearby village of Zolokon, where the first Anabaptist congregation had formed. What caused this decline? By 1529, Zurich laws required its citizens to have their weddings in the state church, to register their children's baptism, and to attend the state church services. Every citizen was to report at once any known Anabaptist, and the state heavily fined anyone who helped the Swiss brethren. Restrictions also affected the villages surrounding Zurich since they were under Zurich's administration. Some executions took place in Zurich, and some Anabaptists died in prison. But even though Zwingli and the council had decreed death by drowning for every Anabaptist, the sentence was not completely carried out. Imprisonment, loss of property, and banishment from Zurich were the usual punishments. The conditions encouraged the Anabaptists to immigrate. We're going to follow that immigration into the Moravia next week. And so, look at your map there. It's an excellent map there on 77. All right. Here on the map on page 77, again, look down to all the center there is in Zurich. And again, look up and see the little St. Gall there. Remember, that was where the great revival with Grebel was. And all the different Bern. Look down from Zurich. Do you see Bern? That became a big center there. Way over there to the right, you see Chur. Remember that place. And look way over to the right. Keep going. You see Tyrol. That's an entire region. That's where George Blaurock ended up burned at the stake. Incidentally, when he was burned at the stake, one of the things that I read said there was an 8-year-old boy who was watching George Blaurock burned at the stake. And his name was Jacob Hutter. There's an 8-year-old boy watching. I found that in one of the things I was reading. So now watch the arrows. And that's why this map is such an excellent map. So the arrow shows the group fleeing persecution and entering into Moravia. And that's where a lot of the Swiss Brethren ended up. Moravia was an interesting place that was able to have a lot more freedom from the Catholics. They weren't so bound to the Holy Roman Empire. They weren't part of the Holy Roman Empire. They still had different relationships. Different kings would come and go with different rights to their areas, but they were always a much more independent area. And that's why we had radical movements. Remember way back with the Waldensians and all those different things, this area has been a hotbed of radical Christianity. And it will be again, we'll see next week, where the Swiss Brethren all end up down there. Also you see the big arrow of everyone going north, and that's called Down River. If you think of it, it kind of looks funny because it's up, but that's the ocean here. These are the mountains right there. And so you go Down River, and you end up in Holland, and you end up in the Palatinate, and you end up in the different places. And that's where the Swiss Brethren began to scatter and find ways to survive in these mountains. Do you have a question, Jim? No, the Reformation still, you're right, that's a good question. I don't know the exact facts of what happened from that battle, but the area was able to stay a Protestant area. Heinrich Bullinger took over the Reformation in his area, and also he had an influence on Bern, a little south of them. And so they were able to maintain a reformed state and kept that going. Yeah, that's a good question. One thing that happened just right after this that probably caused a little of the troops to retreat was when one of the Holy Roman Empire leaders wanted to handle a dispute down in France, believe I have the right country, in France, he sent his troops all there to do it, but he didn't have the money to pay them. So they got mad. And it's 1527, they said, and they got mad at Rome. So all these troops said, well, if you're not going to pay us, we're going to take Rome. So all these troops then came over and attacked Rome, and that's where we get these symbolic Swiss guards still to this day of the Swiss mercenaries that protected Rome, or protected the Pope, but all these soldiers and mercenaries took over Rome. So as you can see, these were hard times, and things would fly back and forth to these different places, and Rome had a lot of other worries as well, not to mention the constant threat of the Muslim invasion now is just further and further and further coming on to them and getting closer. So it was hot times. It was certainly hot times. Real quick there about St. Gall. That was the place for the big revival in St. Gall. Soon after the first baptism in Zurich, Anabaptists began in the town of St. Gall. We heard about that yesterday. Nearly 40 miles northeast of Zurich, the St. Gall City Council did not oppose the movement immediately. In the spring of 1525, Conrad Grebel preached at St. Gall for two weeks and baptized a large group of people there. After his departure, other leaders took up the work. Originally, some council members appreciated Anabaptism, but the peace was short-lived. Zwingli soon pressured them to stand against the radicals. If you remember there, that's where they had the writing of Zwingli being read out and everything like that. So for a big church area, it was pretty much wiped out. Again, you would have homes and people worshipping in private and in caves and that type of thing. But as far as the idea of it taking over Hotel, it was getting knocked down time after time after time. And there's a good thing in that, it prevented the Anabaptism to grow into any form of a state church religion. If you remember even the early Czech Brethren, the Waldensians, remember at that time you had one growing into a militant group and one with Peter Cichowski growing into a non-resistant group. And even the Waldensians, often times you had people who struggled with this whole teachings of Christ on non-resistance. And so you saw that in some of these very early people that we're even going to mention today. So all those areas around there, they suffered a lot of persecution and people responded to that in different ways. And some of the people who just went in because, oh, everyone's doing this, when persecution came, it became something not worth dying for. We talk a lot about, well, if God would bring back persecution, what would it do to the church? When you really do read into the histories like this, it was hard times for the church. It did purify the church, it does. But it's not like when you look at it, you think, oh, if that wouldn't have happened, what could have happened? I know God is the author of all those things, but persecution did affect them in a lot of different ways. And particularly in Bern, when it went to there and all these different areas like Cup on the Cross mentioned there, when they started making proclamations, okay, if you're not going to get your babies baptized in the church, they started noticing that. And they also, young couples started getting together and they didn't want to get married in the church. So they said, okay, well, if you're not married in the church, then you're not married. And if you're not married, then your children are illegitimate. And if your children are illegitimate, we're going to take them from you and put them in orphanages. And you can imagine what that would do to a parent. It's one thing to die for your faith, but to have them come into your house, take your children, put them in orphanages and train them to be Catholics or to be something else. And we'll see this coming out with the Hutterites of some deliberate places where they did that. When I was in Bern, I took a quick – we took our last trip there in the summer, an Anabaptist tour. We weren't seeing Bern. So David Bersow and I and our wives said, we've got to hit Bern. So we broke off from the group and said, we're going to hit two hours of a running tour through Bern. And we did that. We had this walking tour of Bern, and we ran through and saw the whole area. And when you go there to the city hall, when they were building the big capital building there, they discovered that there was a big orphanage under there. And so now as you go there, there's a water fountain right at the front of the city hall that is a memorial to the fact of these orphans that used to be there. I had a different thought of that. I thought, wow, not just orphans, but kidnapped orphans were in that place. When I was there, it was interesting, just a side note. People do festivals out in these big city squares and everything. Well, right to the side, there was this giant spider. I mean, the size of, I don't know, well, bigger than this entire room. That it was part of some, I don't know, carnival thing they were doing right there on that orphanage. And I just thought, ugh. It put all the symbolism to it even more. So all that kind of persecution was very effective. And I'm going to mention that on Monday when we talk about what leads up to the birth of the Amish. Because some of these Swiss brethren didn't respond all the best way. One of the things that I found difficult when I start to understand, when you want to start to understand Anabaptist history, you kind of got the Moravian understanding of the Anabaptists with the Hutterites and the Moravian Anabaptists. You kind of get a clear understanding of the Dutch Mennonites. You have a clear understanding of how the Dutch Mennonites, just like the Swiss, went to Moravia. The Dutch went to Russia. You kind of follow that. But I had this little question mark in my mind. I can't get my hands around the Swiss brethren. So I wrote John D. Roth, and I asked him, I said, you know, I can't quite get my hands around the Swiss brethren. He said it's been one of his biggest appeals is for research and people to get their research done to dig out this area the most. Because it's hard because of all this persecution. You can't quite see them as a people as you can the others. But we know they were there because when the stream of persecution begins to go, and they all go to Moravia, I mean, they get there by the thousands of these Swiss brethren that were scattered through all these areas, ending up in Moravia and ending up in these different places, and continually being around Bern and Zurich even when they tried to get rid of them. Okay. Why don't we take a quick three-minute break there. We'll come back. I'm just going to give you a quick synopsis of some of the leaders of this very early time period. And then I'm going to try to end with a little bit of writings from Michael Sattler and his account in The Martyr's Mirror of his death. And so a quick three-minute break. Okay. Who are some of the men that shaped the movement the most? And here are some of the names that you should know at least just a touch because they constantly come up in writings and things that you have about the Anabaptists. And it can give you an appreciation of some of the brothers like Michael Sattler and some of the Confessions looking at some of these lives of what these people struggled through. Balthasar Hubmeier. Okay, Hubmeier. He was a very influential person. We'll talk about him. Of course, Michael Sattler, Pilgrim Marpeck, Wilhelm Rublin, Hans Hutt, and Hans Dink. Okay. Let's first talk about Hans Hutt. There's a nice old woodcut of him there. Hans Hutt was a young radical. If you remember, I mentioned him when we were talking about the Peasant Revolt. He ends up being there right with Thomas Müntzer at the Battle of Frankenhausen. And they think, of course we don't know for sure, that he even signed Müntzer's Eternal Covenant. There's someone, a Hutt that's from this area that signed the Eternal Covenant. He became very involved with end-time preaching. And that became kind of his thing. And it became the thing where it was a bit, I mean it was over the top. It got him in trouble. This was the first of the end-time preachers. They wouldn't go around, well they did in a way, they wouldn't give you an exact date, but they would think that the events that are happening surely this is the coming of Christ. And Hans Hutt was one of the biggest ones that were saying that. Of course, Thomas Müntzer would have had that as well. And whether he was influenced by that or not, we can only guess. But nevertheless, Hans Hutt wasn't all bad, even though he had some of those excesses. He sees joining the church is joining the Millennium Kingdom, which included sharing all parts of your life in brotherhood. He advocated giving money to the poor. He becomes a very powerful missionary. His name comes up all over the Swiss Brotherhood area as a missionary of people running around and talking about Christ and sharing what God has done in their life. He later goes to Nickelsburg with Balthasar Hubmeyer and stands strong against him when Hubmeyer begins to falter on non-resistance. He meets with Hubmeyer, who sharply disagrees with Hutt's view on end-times prophecy and the use of the sword. So Hutt tries to correct Hubmeyer with his view of the sword, and Hubmeyer is trying to correct Hutt with his view of end-time prophecy. And I guess the two of them could have maybe learned something from each other. That was when Thomas Müntzer, he had all the peasants when he was preaching to them, and Philippa Hess came in and just wiped them out. Thousands were killed. And then after that, they just went around massacring them and making sure everybody was very, very dead. And so he was thinking that was going to be the millennial kingdom coming in. He said, I'll catch the cannonballs in my sleeve and I'll throw them back at them. And of course, it didn't work that way for him. But it would seem so, yeah, definitely so. We don't know for sure. It's recorded he was selling books at the Battle of Frankenhausen, which is strange. He was a book peddler and he was there. But it seems if you really trace it out, there was a Hutt from his area that signed this eternal covenant. So scholars today are making the speculation that it seems that they had to guess that Hans Hutt would have been part of the peasant revolt early on and was maybe influenced by Thomas Müntzer. Those are all guesses, but he was at least there selling books, which is a little strange. If you were that into it, why didn't you grab a sword and run with it? But nevertheless, it just gives us a little insight into some of these guys' lives. But yeah, that was that big peasant revolt. And again, a lot of the areas that were dissatisfied with the church and dissatisfied with the state, a lot of those areas gave rise to some of the biggest converts to anabaptism. And so when things are going really bad in the country, oh, it's terrible, we have a terrible, let's say a terrible president or a terrible thing happens, laws or this, it's those times that people begin to look up and say, surely something better than this. And it's those times that the kingdom of God, I think, can be proclaimed with boldness. And it would seem that the unrest of the peasant revolts and things like that led to a lot of conversions. Later he goes to Augsburg to discuss plans for organization and mission work. Later this meeting would be called the Martyrs' Synod. I'll talk about that in just a second. Because by 1530, only two or three out of the 60 are still alive. Some have suggested that by this time, his time in Nickelsburg, Hutt had begun to tone down his view of the end times. People had talked to him and said, you're going to have to lay some of that down. At the conference he agreed not to, oh, at the conference he seemed to have agreed to lay down some of those things. From his admission, he seems to have, excuse me, from his admission, it is seen how extensive his field of influence was. When he was caught, his confession, and the things of where he was here and where he was there, it was like this man was everywhere, especially in Moravia. After this trial, he was given several others, he was given several other trials, and then finally they put him on the rack, which is the thing that they put you on, they just keep stretching you, and stretching you, and stretching you, until finally you're screaming so much that they hope to get you to recant. And there's a report of his death in page 60 of the Hutterian Chronicles. In page 60 of the Hutterian Chronicles, also the same year, Brother Hans Hutt, a faithful servant of Jesus Christ, was imprisoned at Augsburg in Swabia for the sake of his testimony to God. They racked him in a tower. When they stopped questioning him under torture, he was left lying like a dead man. They went away leaving a light standing in the straw in the prison, like a candle standing in the straw in the prison. The straw caught fire. When they returned, they found him dead. They put his dead body on a chair in a cart and drove to the court where he was condemned and burned. All this was reported by his son, Philip Hutt, who died in the Lord as a member of the church. This Hans Hutt wrote Thanksgiving, we sing at the Lord's Supper. So I guess there's a song in the Osbourne that is still from his writings. Another account says that he was trying to get out and he made like a little torch and the smoke of that ended up causing a fire and he died from there. There were different ways when he was trying to escape. Nevertheless, he died from asphyxiation, from the smoke and it was a shame because he was a very effective missionary, but he did die as a martyr. Where are martyrs in heaven? Anybody know? They're under the throne. Revelation says they're under the throne saying, how long, Lord, how long? I mean, we all want to be close to Jesus and in heaven we're going to want to be as close to Jesus as we can. His martyrs are under the throne themselves. It's a precious thought to think and something like this begins to happen again. What was that martyr sin in? Okay, it's 1527. It's only a little while since this thing just started, two years at the most since the first baptism around there and only a little while since the first martyrs and it's starting to go out and what are the things that are there concerned about? What are the things they get together and start to talk about? First was the Schleidheim Confession, which we'll talk about tomorrow, and then this. And this amazes me. What is the martyr sin? In Augsburg, Bavaria, Germany, at the center of Anabaptist in the 16th century, the leading figures of the movement met on August 20th, 1527, in a conference that was of great significance in the history of the Brotherhood because a large number of the delegates died a short time afterward. As martyrs, this meeting has been called the Martyr's Synod. Okay, what did they do? What did they talk about? Were they arguing about, you know, I don't know, Dale's white shoes or were they, you know, what was the thing that they were risking life and limb to get together to have a meeting about? The conference was there to appoint missionaries who went out in all directions, in twos and threes, to all the countries where their fellow believers live. This is from the Mennonite Encyclopedia. To teach comfort and strengthen them or to build new brotherhoods. Their speech was so impressive that frequently a few hours suffice to establish a new congregation of their converts. They demanded in this new congregations, they demanded an upright life. When a brother sinned, he was to be admonished and if he was in need, he should be aided by the brethren. Anyone who was unwilling to do this should not even request baptism. Those are the things they discussed there. The opponents were surprised by the rapid spread of the movement and unable to understand it. They asserted, oh, when the different people were noticing what was going on here, there was one of the accounts, early accounts there that they said, these people must be giving them some little magic flask of potion because I knew this person and a few months ago he was a drunkard, he was foolish, he would yell at his wife and now suddenly he has a good behavior, he's a righteous man. I think they're giving him some kind of witch's potion. They didn't understand what it means to be born again and that was the kind of thing they were guessing that these Anabaptists must be doing. But wow, what if Jesus really meant every word he said? They took it and they didn't just think, well, okay, we're gonna have our nice life now, we'll go to heaven someday and that type of thing. They put the kingdom into practice in every area and here we're saying, okay, we're gonna send you this way, we're gonna send two over here, we're gonna send three over there and knowing what they meant there, knowing what that meant, that they were gonna possibly be killed, it was impressive. I think it was here that Hans Hutt said, he talked about, he gave this pretty graphic analogy. Hans Hutt, the one we just read about, Hutt. He said that we as Christians are like animals and plants in the sense that animals and plants are, they grow and they go on, but they're growing, they go on to be cut down and killed and consumed by another. And he presented there at the Martyrs' Synod a theology of martyrdom and believed that the true Christians were going to experience this type of life. Some of them even called it the third baptism. It would be the baptism of fire that God would give to his believers. And I read this and I don't know, it's tempting for us when we read these radicals of history to kind of put them into some kind of sub-superhero class, you know what I mean, where those guys were, whoo. But there's a real danger in doing that in that they're reading the same stuff that we're reading, it's called the Bible. And it produced men and women and churches like this that were on fire for the Lord like this and said, whatever it takes, we're here for the kingdom of God, we're gonna worship him. And so I don't know, I take these things like this as a rebuke to me and say, Dean, there's more you could be doing. There's more you could be doing. And here, these brothers that were there and all their plans, you go here, you go there, these missions here, all sent out to these areas. Couldn't they just sit around for a few years? I mean, two years. Think about it. Think about in our churches how quick two years can go by and how you can sit and talk about this or that for two years. Two years is the birth of this movement and they're already sending people out like that and all of these people, except for two or three, dead as martyrs within just a few years, in the next four years. Impressive. All right, Hans Dink. Hans Dink was an interesting fellow. Kind of had some good, great things. He also had some strange theologies. He was a school teacher in Nuremberg. When Protestantism came to Nuremberg, he accepted it and he was kicked out. He had some odd views. When he was kicked out, he was accused. The Protestants, okay, I'm sorry. I'm butchering that. He was a teacher in this area and he was receiving the Reformation views, but when the Reformation got bigger there, like it did in Zurich, he started to differ with the Protestants that were there and because of that, he got expelled from the city just like they expelled George Balrog from the city. And when they did that, on the records it says that he was, quote, downplaying the Bible and overstressing good works and that he rejected water baptism. I don't know if he did or didn't, but he rejected water baptism. He did become what's considered one of the spiritualists of the early Anabaptists. Eventually, he grew tired of Anabaptism and completely gave off of these different things. Certainly in his later life, he surrendered those views of Baptism and such. So perhaps there in the early time, they saw that in his teachings already. He rejected water baptism and a literal reading of the Bible and eventually there seems to be some of his writings that seem even to apply that he became somewhat of a universalist. You know what I mean by universalist? Where it kind of, you know, you can get saved in lots of different religions. God can show himself through Muhammad or God can show himself through some things. It seems towards the end of his life, he drifted even as far as that. But it's a shame because he seemed to have been an extremely gifted man and for a while there, he was very influential. And one of the great quotes of the Anabaptists come from him and it is this, no one may truly know Christ except one who follows him in life. You've probably heard that quoted before and that was from Hans Ding. He had challenged the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith. He believed, which in his prime, his Anabaptist prime at least, which he challenged then, which he said, it would seem to guarantee the standing of a believer with God regardless of the character of his life. And that's when he said his quote there, no one may truly know Christ except one follows him in life. And so it was great to have him when we had him and he seemed to go off into these strange doctrines. And this is what kind of happened in this Swiss Brethren area. And you can kind of see why we lead up to the meat of the Schleitheim Confession. Lots of different opinions started to go. People were getting hold of the Bible and putting this in practice in different ways. All right, one of the most influential people was Balthasar Hubmeier. Let's look at him. We're gonna follow Hubmeier all the way to Moravia. And he goes with the Swiss Brethren when they all head out of this area and head over to Moravia. So we'll pick him up even next week. But let me just give you just a little bit of his life. Born in 1480 from peasant parents, his native town of Friedberg, five miles east of Augsburg. He attended a Latin school. He became a student for a while. He eventually dropped out because he was poor. Worked his way back in. Did great with his studies. And it didn't take him long and he earned himself a doctorate of theology. But not only was he just a brainy boy, he also apparently was a very gifted preacher. And even early on when he was given an administrative role, his first parish, he later on, they said, oh, this guy can preach. And so the bigger church in town wanted to get a hold of him. And so, excuse me, not his town, but a bigger church called him and he went there. In Regensburg in 1516. When he got there in Regensburg in 1516, it was an interesting, very turmoil time. The city was there and everybody's wanting to make a little extra money. And so they decided they wanted to start really increasing the pilgrimages to their town. But there was a large Jewish population in their town at the time. And so the authorities started to really, well, everybody started to getting this oppression against the Jews and had a terrible time of persecuting the Jews and kicking them out of their area. Hubmeyer joined right in. He was right in, joined the whole thing. And they took over, they had a big synagogue even in this town. And there's a picture there I have in the bottom right of your paper. They took over the synagogue and made it a nice cathedral, which they named to the Beatus Mary. So they dedicated this to Mary and turned this into a place for pilgrimages. You know, all these other towns were having all these pilgrimages. If you go to Cologne, they say that if you go to Cologne, the gigantic cathedral of Cologne, if you look in there at the very end, they had this, what they called an ark. It's a golden ark, solid gold around there. And in there, they have the bones of the three wise men. And lots of different places like that have these different things, and it worked. I mean, you built that huge cathedral by people coming in, you'd pay your money, and then venerate the images and go, and you'd get a lot of years out of purgatory. It was a good deal. And so they wanted one of these, and this church that Hubmeyer was a part of began to be one of these places. And people were coming from everywhere. They were making a ton of money. He was claiming all kind of miracles were happening here. But the Dominican monastery started to get jealous because nobody was coming to see them anymore. And so it ended up being this huge rift in the town, all this kind of turmoil. Finally, he got this chance to go to Waldhut. To Waldhut, and he was there. He took the opportunity and left. As he went there, he was a typical priest, but everything changed in 1522. Another person who changed in 1522. He traveled to Basel and saw, remember Galerian? That was Conrad's first teacher. And he saw Erasmus. And there he began to study, and he looked at the New Testament. And just like Zwingli, who got ahold of that New Testament there and said, I've got to know Greek, and he started to study the classics and started to go further. And just like Zwingli, it changed his life. And he began to grow more in the faith. Finally, he got a chance. In Waldhut, he started his typical line of the Reformation. He then started going more and more to the guys like Zwingli and Luther with the Reformation. However, his teaching about faith was closer to the radicals, the radical reformers, the Anabaptists. And let me read one bit from his documents there on page 82 of the Anabaptist story. It's a decent one. A little too Baptist, but it's a decent one. We all have our takes on things, and I do too. But I like this. He tells the stories in story form. It's the Anabaptist story by Estep. I really appreciate this book. He says here in one of his documents of the faith, as he's going through this time, he says, Faith alone makes us holy before God. Number two. That was number one. Number two, this faith is the acknowledgement of the mercy of God, which he has shown us in the offering of his only begotten son. This excludes all sham Christians who have nothing more than an historic faith in God. Did you catch that? He's starting to differentiate between sham Christians and real Christians. He says, Such faith cannot remain passive, but must break forth to God in thanksgiving and to mankind in all kinds of works of brotherly love. Hence, all vain religious acts such as candles, palm branches, and holy water will be rejected. And so we see some of his ideas of faith, speaking of this idea that faith is something real that has to change your life. Soon the bishops heard his preaching and ordered him to be removed. He left in September 1524 and became a bit of a refugee, ending up in Schaffhausen. There he spoke out against the Catholics and even more against persecution of heretics, and he wrote a book called Concerning Heretics and Those That Burn Them. Kind of an interesting book. And so he was rebuking the church for burning heretics. It's not an Anabaptist book. It still justifies capital punishment and such. So he's still struggling with these issues, but he has this famous line. If you know Habermas, you should attach this quote with him. Truth is immortal. And it's a good quote. Truth is immortal. I have it highlighted there. Truth is immortal. If we can keep that in all of our different problems with churches and people and life, truth is immortal. Developing his theology, he became more and more Christ-centered. He writes more. In another work he states, In matters of faith, the Bible alone, specifically the words of Christ, was the final authority. Eventually, after all the turmoil between the Catholics and the Protestants there at Waldhut, he got his job back. In these days, there were times that the city protected itself against the soldiers from Austria. So he's there in Waldhut. A lot of people are into the Reformation now, getting converted. But remember, this is one of those border towns that are constantly having the stress from Austria. And it seems that Habermas approved of or even supported the military support of the area. So again, I'm just pointing out that although he grows into an Anabaptist, he always seemed to, or at least early on, he seemed to have a problem with non-resistance. We're going to see that when he gets to Moravia. He seems to struggle again with non-resistance. But during that middle time, he seems to flow well with the rest of the Anabaptists. By mid-summer 1524, the peasant war coming through Waldhut, and he found their demands, quote, both Christian and just. And he even helped them compose a declaration. When all those peasants came through his town, he even kind of helped them out. By July, Habermas responded to Zwingli's book on baptism and kind of drew a line for infant baptism. And here's something that comes up in a lot of the teachings now is the order. Okay, how about in our circles? Have you heard people talk about it's the order that's important? You should get born again, then baptize, and then, well, first be born again, then be baptized. Of course, first you have to hear the word. He talked about that order. On the Christian baptism of believers, in the book, he stresses an order in baptism. First, there should be preaching. Second, repentance and belief. And third, baptism. I know it's very fundamental to us, but in their days, it was important. And if we get that far, hopefully we do, and the disputes that we still have with today in Lancaster County and different places, I've had people argue with me. Part of big Anabaptist churches say, well, it doesn't really matter when you are baptized. As long as you did it one time. He seems to think that there is an order that's important. What do you think? Do you think the order's important? So let's say someone's in my church and he was a sinner his whole life. He's just a rebel, but he wants to get married. And then he wants to get married, so he just joins the church and gets baptized. Later on, he gets very nicely born again, and so now, is it important to baptize him, or is it not? It's a controversy. You can have here, look at some of these issues and just have something to think about. I don't want to stress it too far. I want to keep in mind, he is specifically talking about infant baptism, so I don't want to overdo the analogy, but just to bring us into thinking. We're going to hear some quotes from Edel Simons that give this as well. My general feeling, I'll just throw it out, is I believe the order is important. I do, though, think that sometimes we don't give enough credit for a immature faith. A lot of people, they maybe have backslid, they've gone through hard times, and it's sometimes more easy to, instead of be humbled by your backsliding, to say, oh, I wasn't even saved back then. My personal feeling. On the other hand, to say that the order is not important I think is dangerous as well. That's my opinion. And I've dealt with that in Lancaster County a lot, dealing with some testimonies. I'm slow at ever rebaptizing somebody, but... I don't know. I don't like to do that. I don't like to do it if it helps them. I really try to discern it, and I tell the person, I want you to go to God, and you let me know, and this is something that I think God would reveal to you, what was that primitive faith that you had, let's say, five years ago, ten years ago. But I had a young man come from a conservative Mennonite background. He came to me, and he said, I know I was saved. That I know. But, I mean, a month later, I was out, and his testimony was very hard and very sad. He said, I'm really asking you to rebaptize me. I said, I'm not going to do it. And so, I don't like to just do it for the sake of just in case type of thing. I think it's something that God would reveal in your soul, and I let a person tell me instead of me telling them. Yeah. And again, I wonder sometimes, now that I've gone through an area that, you know, deals with this a lot, Lancaster County, sometimes some of these people's habits, when they come to one of our types of churches, a renewal, Anabaptist church or whatever, you kind of blame all your faults on your past. Well, those guys were this and that and everything. Well, once they've been around in our circle, sometimes you think, oh, no, I don't know. And it's made me just be even a little bit more cautious to say, okay, you know, let's not just want to put a notch in our belt to say that we got so many people converted from this and got them into our churches. I think that can be very dangerous. And if we use baptism as a weapon like that, I think it's very wrong. And so, I think that you can have a very immature faith in your professions of Christ. But I do believe a person, me personally speaking, that the Holy Spirit would reveal that to a person. And I don't want to tell them that. I want them to tell me. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Good. Right, right. Great. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's good. I appreciate you bringing that out. You're right, a confusion on the whole baptism thing itself. And even in the Anabaptist world, there's different views on there. You know, the Peter passage where it says an answer of a clean conscience towards God, that word's a very vague word in the Greek. I've understood that in the German, it's the word bund, which is where we get our word covenants. One can look that up for me. And so you would have sometimes the covenant part of it into the talking about it. So you're saved, you're born again, but then kind of like a marriage, you're making a covenant to God. And they would translate, some of the Germans translate that word bund into that covenant that you're making with God. Some rich, deep meanings in all that. My general feeling on the sacraments is this, and then I've got to move on to Sattler. In the Old Testament, I think it's very clear that whatever they called the sacraments in those days, God is in His way that He would give us very exact ways to do things. I mean, He showed us, you know, you're to take this sacrifice and move it this way and have smoke that way and meet here and meet then. But for some reason in the New Testament, He did not do that. And I can't help but think that it's on purpose. For me now to go and some of the exactness of how you do these ordinances, when you do them, I mean, do you do it in immersion? Do you do it this? Do you do, you know, how do you do the communion and all that? Those things that are not specifically detailed, my personal feeling is I think it's dangerous for us to go too far with those things. These things are called a mystery, a sacramentum. A sacrament is a mystery. And so I have a bit of a, I use the term, a dogmatic ambiguity in dealing with some of these things that I don't want to go too far in trying to explain a mystery to the point that I cheapen the mystery. And, but nevertheless, I think it's good to, it's a good discussion. And I think that the order is important. But remember back, like with the Christology debates, if we go too far, it can get ourselves in trouble. I heard once there was a church that was called the Church of Christ, One Cup Church of Christ. And they split over the fact that, well, it's only one cup. And if you have more than one cup, it's not right. And if we get into that, and it had to be a cup, so it means it had to have a handle. And, you know, God help us. And dare we not laugh at them. We have all our silly things, don't we? But nevertheless, that's something that we can consider. All right, real quick. So Hubmeier, Hubmeier ends up going with the Reformers. We saw him in that revival that we talked about yesterday. And he eventually gets there at the dispute, the disputation there in Zurich. When he's there in Zurich, when he's there in Zurich, he's there and he's arrested. When they see that he's, let me get the timing right, sorry. Let me make sure I get this right to you. When he came into Zurich and they arrested him, he got thrown into jail. And when they were in jail, they were asking him to recant. Do you remember all that was happening there with Grebel and Felix Mons and everything? They were asking him to recant. And so he heard all these things and finally he would not recant, but all his friends, his theologian friends did. Finally, Hubmeier, in prison there in Zurich, he said, give me the letter, and he wrote out, he recanted his Anabaptist beliefs. Zwingli loved this. So here's Hubmeier. Dr. Hubmeier, and we're gonna start, so he started parading Hubmeier around to show off of this recanting. And it was kind of an impressive story what happened. As he took him around, he took him the Sunday morning and he brought them there to the parish church and he said, okay, and Zwingli got up and he started saying, Dr. Hubmeier, you know, he starts talking about infant baptism. Well, all along Hubmeier's sitting there, you know, feeling, what have I done? And he's boiling, and Zwingli's going on about how Hubmeier's gonna come up here and tell us why infant baptism is right and all that. Finally, Hubmeier comes up to the pulpit and he says, I can't do it! I can't recant! And right there in front of all this public place, he recants from his recanting and starts preaching against infant baptism right there in the pulpit. Zwingli stops what's going on, runs up there to try to prevent what's happening, and he's thrown back in jail. And this time, Zwingli is furious about what happens to him and has him now, this evangelical Protestant reformer, has him put on the rack and they stretch him and to torture him until finally, again, Hubmeier recants again, unfortunately. And to his humiliation then, they just let him out. He recanted and they let him out. And that must have been a hard experience. And the writers say that Hubmeier, from that on in his letters, had much more of a humble spirit to it, much more of a humble spirit. I'll read you this little account here in the Anabaptist story about a quote from him, how he talks about it. Speaking of himself, and after he recanted the second time, he says, I may err, I am a man, but a heretic I cannot be, because I ask constantly for instruction in the word of God. But never has anyone come to me and pointed out a single word, but one single man and his followers against his own privileged preaching, word and print, whose name I spare for the sake of God's word, who against common justice and appeal in behalf of his own government, the confederacy, and also the emperor by capture, imprisonment, suffering, and the hangman, tried to teach me the faith. This is the way he feels now that he got home after he recanted. But faith is a work of God and not of the heretic's tower in which one sees neither sun nor moon and lives on nothing but water and bread. Oh God, pardon me my weakness. It is good for me, as David says, that thou hath humbled me. So it's a nice response. The brethren were very forgiving of him, apparently, and with his powerful preaching, he did get back into positions of authority and back into the church. We follow Hovemeyer. Then he's hung around in Zurich for a while, but you can imagine it must have been pretty embarrassing. And so finally he hears about Moravia. Ah, Moravia. Moravia is a place that they allow differences of opinion. Strasbourg was also a place that they were. But Moravia was where he thought he would go. And so he set his plans to go to Moravia and he went there. And we're going to pick him up in Moravia next week where eventually he leads an entire, again, almost an entire Anabaptist nation coming out in his influence there in Moravia and ends up with a sword and ends up being tortured again. And we'll see how he responds the last time. Very, very interesting man. He writes beautifully. You know, not all of these writings, I admit. Some of them are like polemic. You know, they're kind of like they're always arguing some debate. But some of these people, when you start reading them, they're just beautiful. And I appreciate a lot of his writings. He'll take a moment and pause about God and thanking God. And you see some of that influence perhaps in Peter Riddemann and just this gushiness almost about their love of Jesus and things. And some of Menno Simon's writings, particularly Our Faith, some of them are very polemic. But some of those are just beautiful. Obviously, we're not going to get to Sattler, but that's good. It'll bring us into our discussion with Schleiheim at the beginning and then we'll go into Schleiheim. I should mention Wilhelm Rublin. If you remember, he was one of the first ones there in Zurich that started saying you shouldn't baptize your babies. He was also an extremely good preacher, but also involvement in the peasant war. Now, scholars are saying how involved was he? When he was preaching there, the basal chronicles say about him, quote, he knew the Holy Scripture so well that the like had never been heard before. He preached it so well, the like had never been heard before. His audience started numbering up to 4,000. He preached against the ceremonies of the old church and its hierarchy, the vigils, the annual masses, the masses for the dead, the regulations of fastings, and offering to give an account on all those points should be given. Everything should be come from the Bible. But in 1522, when all the Anabaptist changes started happening in his little village was he was preaching. He started making those changes the first and I have down there at the bottom of seven. Reuben was the first in the Canton of Zurich in early 1524 to preach against the baptism of infants. He said, quote, if I had a child, I would not have it baptized before it came to maturity and could choose its own godparents. And so he befriended Michael Sattler, and we're going to hear about tomorrow before we read the Schleiheim Confessions. He was arrested in prison for a time. He gathered around men like Felix Mons and Conrad Grebel and who were of similar beliefs. After the debate with Zwingli, these Anabaptists were expelled from the regions and Reuben now turned towards his hometown in Rottenburg. Here at Horeb, he was active in the Anabaptist call, the cause. And while he was there, he seemed to already even have a bit of authority because the brand new Michael Sattler, it says, he called upon Michael Sattler and told him to take charge of his region. When Sattler and his followers, including Reuben's wife, were seized by the Austrian government and taken to Binsdorf, Reuben fled to Rutlingen. And then we're going to hear about, I'll give you Sattler's martyrdom tomorrow, but we wouldn't even have this, and maybe even the martyr's mirror is influenced. I wonder, I ponder this. We don't know, of course. Right after the death of Michael Sattler, Reuben was just devastated, and he put it in print, and put the martyrdom account in print. It embarrassed the Catholics. It embarrassed, Sattler was actually burned at stake by Catholics. And that whole thing, the account that we're going to read tomorrow, the court account, and all those types of things, it was, it just went everywhere. Again, it went viral. And that kind of thing made for a lot of attention. And you have to wonder, what effect did this little writing have in the conversion of the people into the faith? And also, just with this whole idea of what does it mean to put these accounts in a book like this, like the martyr's mirror. And we see one of these earliest accounts that was done there by Reuben. Real quick on Pilgrim Marpeck, and we'll stop. Pilgrim Marpeck is a very interesting fellow. He kind of was ignored by all the early 50s and 1950s and 1960s scholars, the Harold S. Benders and some of those. And a lot of scholars today are looking into him more and more, mainly for the reason it doesn't appear that there was any group that kept with him. He was an interesting fellow in the fact that he was very received by his area. I'll just read you real quick there about him. Well, you can read that on your own there. He was an engineer, and when he was used by his local government there in Strasburg, and they liked him and they used him all the way to this time of his death. And they seem to have winked at his Anabaptist teachings because he was so influential. He helped like this major thing of getting the wood from one area that was chopped into the area. And still to this day, there's things that are named after him in Strasburg. But the thing that differed with him with the Swiss Brethren was he seemed, whether it was an influence from his nice lifestyle in Strasburg, who knows, or maybe because of his way he interpreted the scriptures, he has several writings that were challenging the Swiss Brethren and challenging the Hutterites that he believed that they were both too strict, too over the top, and that their separation was going too far. And so, as you can imagine today, he is a people looking for a moderate, Anabaptism would see him as the hero of their movement. Nothing really survived from him. Again, in the writing that I got sent to me from John D. Roth, John D. Roth, who his favorite person is, Pilgrim Marpeck, and he says that he believes that not necessarily there was a totally different people. He wonders how much relation was there between he and the Swiss Brethren, his group and the Swiss Brethren group, and maybe some of the writings. Imagine how your bishop may write a scathing letter to this bishop. It doesn't mean they're necessarily against each other. As a matter of fact, sometimes it means they are together. And maybe some of that's what was going on. But there does seem to be definitely a different group that circles around Marpeck that was different than the Swiss Brethren and the Hutterites that now come from this Zurich-Swiss movement that flows from here. And so, that all happened. So now, all around this area again, people having mass movements, people giving up, people coming into a little spiritualism, some dealing with patriotism. How do we do with, well, the spiritualists also said, well, you don't really care what you do with your life. They almost get into a little bit of some Gnostic ideas. And very early on, 1527, they form together and have the Schleiheim Confession. And that's what we're gonna read tomorrow. So, what I want is to actually discuss it. Part of your grade is gonna be discussion. And so, come with your Bible, and let's go through there, and let's see how this confession sort of, I think, solidified, particularly for the Swiss Brethren, an identity that I think still lasts to this day. All right, let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you so much again, for your word and what it does in our life. We thank you for these examples. We pray that you would give us the perfect balance of following you in righteousness. Help us, O God, to serve you and to praise you all the days of our life. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.