Anabaptist History (Day 12) Early Anabaptist Concept of Missions and the Kingdom of God

Okay, today I hope if you got a little bit of chance to read the chapter 8 in your books, then we're going to be looking at the Hutterites, maybe if we get to there. Actually the official Hutterites, I don't know if we're going to quite get there, but I hope to. But first let's let's start with the word of prayer.

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you Lord for the Holy Spirit and I thank you for the promise that Jesus said that if anyone asked for the Holy Spirit that you would give, you would give him freely. And I pray God that we here today, we do ask your presence among us, we ask you to bring us the Holy Spirit and allow your scriptures and your word and your design for what you want the church to be to inspire our hearts this morning. I pray you would do it again in this generation.

It's in Jesus name we pray, amen. Amen. All right, do you have your handouts? Everybody has a handout? All right, as I began to do my study last night to start to discuss the Hutterites and the whole Moravian Anabaptists, I started to think first of all of what are some of their distinctives? What are some of the things that makes you, makes it something to say about them, what makes them stand out from the rest of them? And of course the obvious one is their very passionate view of economics, obviously comes out in all the Moravian Anabaptists, obviously, especially with the Hutterites, obviously.

But you know as I, so I started to gather up some quotes and I hope to give those maybe tomorrow or things, but as I did that, you know, I was thinking that in some ways though just giving these quotes is giving the wrong impression. And so I started to think, you know, how do I, if I think of the South German, these zealous Swiss brethren and they're fleeing to Moravia and the passion that they had, but one of the things that I could only come out with is, I call the Moravian Anabaptists the Marine Corps of the Anabaptists. And it wasn't so much that I see the economics or some of their their different things as being an emphasis that they were staring at, it was all of their life was a means to be able to produce this mission machine, this propagating of the kingdom of God.

When we're about to see if I get there, hopefully we will, when Hans Huth is there with Hubemeyer in Nickelsburg and they're arguing and Hubemeyer is now starting to set up a state church practically, using Anabaptist theology almost, in Nickelsburg. And when I see the debates between them, you know, we could give you a little quotes about their differences, but when you look at Hans Huth's life, remember him, I mean, all over the place. He was a missionary, he made it after this disputes there to the Martyr Synod.

And to compare that with settling down in Nickelsburg and starting the state church compared to Jesus is coming back, although granted he was a little excessive with that, but hey, Jesus is coming back and we've got to hurry to propagate the kingdom. And I see those two worlds clashing. Perhaps we need balance, perhaps we need other things to make the extremes not so dangerous.

I don't know, I don't know. I do know that Jesus said that there's a broad way and a narrow way, and he didn't seem to give it a little footnote for a middle way. You know, there's a broad way and there's a narrow way.

And I see these brothers, these early Swiss brethren and these Moravian brothers seriously trying to squeeze through the gate, as Tillieman van Braat said that they squeezed through the gate so tightly that they left flesh on the post. Tillieman van Braat gives that analogy. And this is what I see in these brothers.

So I pondered last night and I said, if I just give these economic ones, it's, you know, you don't see the Hutterites, the early Hutterites and the early Moravian Anabaptists wanting to go around and say, isn't this great? And having kumbaya sessions and just, you know, talking about how great it is that they're there. You know what I mean? It was, there was a purpose that they were wanting to accomplish, and I think that's a big difference. Even Dietrich Bonhoeffer said the person who focuses on community will destroy community.

And so as we see some of these more radical things that we're gonna see in the Moravian Anabaptists, I thought the thing that I wanted to hit on was the early Anabaptist view of missions, because particularly the South German and the Moravian Anabaptists took this and turned it into a Marine Corps of the Anabaptists like none other. So I pondered last night and I came up with this as the view of the church for the Moravian Anabaptists and the early Swiss Brethren. Alright, the mission machine.

Conversion, find food and shelter, gather all available resources. That wasn't necessarily a theology per se, but just you have to, and go. Ask questions later and organize, teach and disciple, go.

And bury the martyrs. That's how I sum up the early Anabaptists. Conversion, genuine conversion.

Okay, quickly find food and shelter. There are a lot of times you remember seeing them in the woods and things like that. Gather all the available resources.

Remember in Zolocum there, they're saying, okay, we'll do this, we'll do that, but then they just went. How long was Conrad Grebel in Zolocum before he left and went to the mission field? Three days. Three days, and he was back out.

Ask questions later. We do see them now being able to say, okay, some things went good, some things went bad. They were very big into discipleship.

This wasn't an empty message they were given, but then they just kept going, and truly they did bury the martyrs. So what I've done here now is to look at this, the early Anabaptists, particularly the South German, the early Swiss Brethren, and what those merged into become the Moravian Anabaptists and their concept of the, what I would call, the mission machine. And just before I came to Faith Builders, I did a big study on Zinzendorf and the Zinzendorf revival there with Bethlehem and Hernhut.

And again, I see some of times these people who, you get a group of people together and it's, oh, I'm gonna give everything I have. You end up with some of these things repeated. We saw that with the Czech Brother, remember that, with our Pilgrim Church.

We saw that with different movements like that. When I was preparing this, I did find two sources that I thought would be nice. I put them on your paper.

A couple journal papers, one by the name of Tim Kupfer and Hans Cosdorf. Both, I thought, were very helpful in this. So I put those on your paper.

I'm going to be using some of the things that they gathered. In his paper, Kupfer wrote this. He said, no command of Christ was given more preeminence than the Great Commission and no text appears more frequently in confessions of faith and court testimonies than Matthew 28, 18 through 20, Mark 16, 15 through 16, and Psalm 24.

The whole idea that the kingdom of God is at hand and we are going to propagate that kingdom. Scholars today who look at them say, well, they were very influenced by the thought that Jesus was returning the next day or in three years. Scholastic tendencies, they believed in that, but I don't know.

I say, so what's wrong with that? Jesus is going to appear to those who look for his appearing, the scriptures tell us. And so, yes, I do agree and I will admit that some of these brothers took it to the extreme, particularly in putting years and dates and things like that. But nevertheless, the idea of that the kingdom of heaven is just on the other side of this veil was something that was intense with them.

And so the intensity of giving the mission came out over and over. They did not live out the Great Commission as command and duty only, but only as eschatological expectation. The proclamation of the new order God was bringing to completion at this pivotal point in human history.

That's so well said. They believe they were the heralds of the dawn of the age to come in which God would establish his people and his divine rule throughout the earth. Oppression reinforced their hopes that the not yet so evident in this present age would ultimately give way to the triumph of God, which even now was being realized in their missionary endeavors.

Where are you going? What's the final game plan? So when we're thinking about just living your life, you're getting married, you're having children, you're building a church building, where is it all going? The kingdom of God. One day Jesus will reign from the from the rising of the sun into it's going down everywhere. We're going there.

And brothers and sisters, we're on the winning side. We're on the winning side. So with confidence we can go out and proclaim the gospel of Christ and see that this life is nothing.

I'm gonna do everything for Christ and live for him. That was their attitude. An eschatological expectation.

The proclamation of the new order that God was bringing into completion at this pivotal point in human history. Wow. And he mentions here obedience and the right missionary method.

It seems appropriate to consider their missionary methods in terms of an early spontaneous expansion and a later planned expansion. Okay, go then ask questions later and organize. The first period covers the three and a half years that begin in January 21st 1525 when the unavoidable breach between Zwingli and his most faithful disciples occurred over the issue of the mass and ended with the and ended this period ended with the Osberg Martyrs Synod which was the first time in the history of the or at least since the Waldensians and the Czech Brotherhood.

Yeah, what am I saying? I'm falling in the same trap. This is the first time for a long time that brothers got together and had a mission conference. Now here is something that's particularly sad, particularly sad.

This is hundreds of years before William Carey was a gleam in his mother's eye. This is hundreds of years before Hudson Taylor stepped foot on any kind of China place, yet when you pick up books these days on mission, they call these people the father of missions. And it's wrong and some of these things that were hidden I think in some of these histories, people don't like talking about these people because they're not quite in your camp, but the approach of these missionaries was absolutely extraordinary, absolutely extraordinary.

And so as we see there with the Martyrs Synod, very early on the necessity, we talked about that a few days ago, the necessity they felt of this passion for representing the kingdom of God on earth and telling everybody about it. Let's keep going there. Apart from the Martyrs Synod, the missionary enterprise was not marked by well-organized strategizing, yet what the Anabaptists lacked in strategy, they compensated in zeal.

This zeal was impelled by an eschatological perspective developed out of fierce oppression. Everybody was trying to kill them. The Anabaptists radical eschatological dualism, this brother wrote here, demarcated sharply between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world.

Again that idea of Schleidheim. We are ushering in the kingdom of God. Now here's the way kingdom theology usually is represented.

David Robertson gave this once beautiful in a sermon that he preached and it's well said. He's not the first one many kingdom theology people. The age came in, the wicked evil age, the eons, it says in Greek, as Romans says, do not be conformed to this world, to this age, and it's going in, but it's wickedness.

It's ran by law, it's ran by fear of law, it's ran by the sword, but it is an order and a people and an age. But Jesus Christ put in, implanted in this the kingdom of God. Now one day, praise God, we'll be here, but until that time the kingdom of God is implanted in this age.

But here's the fun part for us. We are supposed to represent this now. We are the ambassadors of heaven.

We are to have kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And in that the way we think of our life, that's the way we consider what you're going to do tomorrow, that's the way you're going to consider your occupations, that's the way you're going to consider. When the early Anabaptists talked about the priesthood of all believers, they meant it a little more than just some sort of sacerdotal explanation.

They meant it that your occupations in life, everything you do in life, was for this purpose. Be what is to become, Eberhard Arnold said. Be what is to become.

All right, that feeling of where we're going, and that dualism of the things of the world and things of God, remember we saw that in Schleitheim, all other dualisms in turn were rejected. The dualism of the sacred and the secular, the clergy and the laity, and even the differentiation between proclamation of the gospel and social concerns. Remember they were taking an entire kingdom.

They didn't get into these disputes, well do we help them while they're poor? Do we help them while they're sick? Do we help those things or do we just get them saved? That kind of thinking never even came to them. They're taking this beautiful treasure of the words of Jesus and saying this is what it looks like. On Judgment Day, to give you another analogy, let's say, let's imagine, let's go on Judgment Day and all the people that live during this time, the wicked people that did not receive Christ, finally get to heaven, and I don't know if you can really do this, but they're they're looking down from heaven.

My children always make fun of my drawings, but they're looking, oh I should put a pouty face, they're looking down from heaven and they're looking and now they're seeing this and it's fullness. And now they're being punished in hell or whatever and they're and they're, stretch with the analogy will you, all right, but they can say, oh that's what they were talking about. And that's challenging as the church.

We are supposed to represent to the world what it looks like if people actually take Jesus seriously. We are to represent to the world what it actually looks like if we're supposed to take Jesus seriously. And that's the way they just thought about it in a very innocent, simple way.

All right, no cost was considered too great for the privilege of walking in the steps of the crucified Lamb who was their Lord. Their motivation was passionate love for God and their neighbor. And here's this, I love this expression this brother came up with, as non-resistance was love's negative expression, missions became its positive affirmation.

Good quote, huh? As non-resistance was love's negative expression, I'm gonna love you by not resisting, that's the negative thing, but in a positive way I'm gonna go into the lands because I love you and I'm gonna bring to you this beautiful kingdom and I'm gonna show it to you. Now, I wrote the next section there, I say don't just talk about it, do it. You know, when we get one step closer and we get excited about mission, we end up having mission conferences and stuff and that's great, you know, and it makes us feel better.

And I'm not throwing any stones, brother, I've been in this seat for a long time and I'm just, I'm more guilty than you are. I was about to say just as, I'm more guilty than you are. So we have our mission conferences and we have our things, but look at the way they did this.

The Martyr Synod. At that Martyr Synod there was planned a systematic sending of missionaries. The designation apostles were deliberately chosen for those who were sent out in apostolic teams of three and specific places for the sole purpose of evangelism and church planting.

Hans Huth, one of the chairmen of the 1527 Missionary Conference in Augsburg, had already been doing this around Europe. But now at the Martyr Synod, the Augsburg Church was behind the program of evangelism and the Baptist apostolate took on new shape and form. Due to the intensified persecution, these apostles were convicted that their missionary efforts would be of limited time.

Jesus is coming back. You've got to hurry, was the passion given there. And all I did at that Synod, calm Hans Huth down, quit saying it's gonna happen in three years.

Nevertheless, they did continue to say Jesus is coming back. Now check this though, it's not just a mission conference. The Sending Church of Augsburg shared the convictions of the missionaries and urgently called for a commitment to evangelism.

Check this out. Within two weeks from the termination of the conference on August 24th, you have issued mandates in Augsburg authorities against the Anabaptists and against the spread of the church in the Augsburg area. The Augsburg Church sent out more than two dozen missionaries to strategic centers in Germany and Austria in under two weeks.

Wow. Wow. I know.

True, true, true. It wasn't cross-cultural, a good point. Lucas asked, were they prepared? And it seems to be, it's kind of like Zwingli's answer was, you know, they need to take time and this type of thing and even for conversion.

But yeah, I don't know. Now they did come back and ask questions, you know, and I'm sure if we looked into some of those things that happened, these were real men, they weren't walking with any Superman capes on, I'm sure there was some bad things that happened. As we looked at some of the extremes that happened in these things, some things did go wrong.

So well brought out. Not everything was great, but you know, all the same. Yeah, I'm with you brother.

I'm rebuked more. So let's say we pull it back a little bit and get some training. Still, it's inspiring, isn't it? Okay.

But what had happened to the centers in Switzerland two years earlier now became the fate of the sending church in Augsburg. It was choked by fierce persecution. Three years after that conference, 60 missionary apostles were there.

In the less than three years, only two or three were left alive. Were left alive. And this is considered, ironically, the first Protestant missionary conference, August 1527.

All right. Now look at this. I have another handout.

I'm trying the overhead projector thing today. So check this out. This was on that article that I was reading to you from.

Very nicely put out chart I took from here. Wow. So as we look over here, just between the, this is the first few years of a collection of some of these missionaries that went out.

I mean, wow. Right from the start here. And one day he baptized 35, George Shadd 40, Wilhelm Robli 60 in one day in 1525.

And then we see also Balthasar Hubmeier 360. And then later in his life and all through his ministry ended up a total of 6,000. Comrade Grebel in that going out now is starting to catch fire even more.

A whole procession of men and women there in St. Gaul. And he went around continuing with those revivals, baptizing the entire city. Johannes Brotli, that was another man from Zolokon.

And again, in nearly a whole village who he was evangelizing to, baptized him there. And we go through, we see these different ones. I mean, over a hundred, a thousand, about a hundred, over 200.

And look how long it took him to maintain some of these. And by the way, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead. They gave their life as martyrs.

They had very short lifespans. When Conrad Grebel went out on this missionary thing, did he know that in less than two years he'd be meeting his Lord? Dead. We get down here.

One of my favorites again, Leonhard Schemer. Remember him? He was the brother who talked about all that having must have Christ within you. Again, very powerful missionary, over 200.

And he excited many others like him, and particularly gave to the spirit of the South German and to the Moravians. We go to Jacob Hutter and all that he did there. This brother, when we get to Holland, incredible.

He also, this is not just a guess, he kept very good records. And Leonhard Bowens, 10,378. This man was all over the place, evangelizing and baptizing.

And this brother here, 4,000 in his lifetime. So we see that it was definitely a part of who they were as a people. Who they were as a people.

Peter Walpott, who we're going to get to when we talk about the Moravian Anabaptists, particularly became one of the leaders of the Hutterites. He is said by, and the historian Littel, and he writes about the Anabaptists often, he says this of him. Peter Walpott, who headed, quote, the greatest missionary organization of the epoch.

Meaning this entire era. Maintaining an extensive correspondence, writing the things down and keeping letters back and forth, and guiding a large effective core of lay missionaries. Good use of the word core.

That's why I called it the Marine Corps of the Anabaptists. And so when you look at that, it's, and some of these radicals, you have to understand that when you're reading some of their quotes and some of their disputes, even as we talked about the Amish yesterday, you know, as we talked about them, to see them only as people, and you quote that they were concerned about this, concerned about that, but a lot of time where this crisis comes is a group of young zealous people who are on fire for the Lord, and they're in collision with somebody who's just saying, you know, we're, like, like Nickelsburg, we're just starting this, you know, state church thing here. And, and although Hans Huth in that situation would have, would have had lots of different things, I could just imagine that it's, it's like asking a totally wrong question.

This is not what the kingdom of God is about. Seems to be the kind of way that they were, were coming about these things. And so to do this, in the mind of the Swiss Brethren, whether you had a community of goods, or whether you had one thing or the other, everything in your church was for the propagation of either glorifying God or propagating his kingdom.

So all those discussions came around somewhere in this way, and I, and I believe that's, that's still one of the remnants that I very much appreciate in the Anabaptist churches, of all Anabaptist churches that are somewhat conservative, is this idea of that our economics should be used for the propagating of the kingdom. Although it's easy for us to let that slide, isn't it? So these Moravian Anabaptists in particular saw, okay, if you know where we're going, if this is where we're going, then what's going to get us there the best way, and what's going to get as many people there the best way? If you could do everything you could. Everything.

And I, again, I see this in awakened groups throughout time, and I think it's in this light that I read, when I read through these chronicles, and I read through these different things, that I see their, their concern. It's not like they're trying to make a particular point on their community of goods. For instance, in the Confession of Faith by Peter Ritteman, which is official, right, Marcus, the official, official statement of faith for the Hutterite Church of the 60,000 Hutterites today, there's only a couple paragraphs that even deal with community of goods in here, and that could be applied just for mutual aid in all of our Swiss Brethren type of churches.

But the purpose that comes through there, and I'm gonna hope to read you some quotes in there, is this idea that God is wanting to do something amongst his people. All right, Historian Baten, who wrote on the Reformation, speaking of this time period, says this. He says, those who thus held themselves as sheep for the slaughter were dreaded and exterminated as if they had been wolves.

They challenged the whole way of life of the community, the city, the town. Had they become too numerous, Protestants would have been able, unable to take up arms against Catholics, and the Germans could have not resisted the Turks. And the Anabaptists did become numerous.

They despaired of society at large, but they did not despair of winning converts to their way. Every member of the group was regarded as a missionary. Check that point out.

Every member of the group was regarded as a missionary. Men and women left their homes to go on evangelistic tours. The established churches, whether Catholic or Protestant, were aghast at these ministers of both sexes, insinuating themselves into towns and farms.

And some of the communities in Switzerland, on the Rhine Valley, Anabaptists began to outnumber Catholics and Protestants alike. Now, everybody a missionary. Now I'm sure if you've had missionaries come to your town or your church, you may have heard this said before, what if everybody lived like a missionary over here in America? What could we do overseas? And you hear this call come out from missionaries all the time.

You know, if one person catches on to that, it'd be radical. But when an entire church catches on to that, it becomes historical. And that's the kind of thing that we see from this, where everybody and all that they were doing and their professions and what they thought they wanted to do were people that were wanting to go toward this goal.

Let me just read you this. This is not out yet. This is the next issue of The Remnant and part of my Moravian Mission Machine.

I see other movements that caught on like this. The Waldensians and the, again, the Czech Brethren and people like that. But particularly one of my absolute favorites is the Moravians.

They were not Anabaptists. And I'll have to, because we're talking about Moravia right now, I'm talking about Count Zinzendorf Moravians. And I don't know, there was something about that area that was very radical to this kind of spirituality.

But here's a quote here from the bishop when he's just talking about everyday life. They had got to the point there in Bethlehem, a little north of where I live, and they were talking about how everything done in Bethlehem was done for the propagation of the gospel. And here's a quote from Bishop Spangenberg.

Remember, this is not an Anabaptist, but it gives you the kind of spirit that I see in these early Anabaptists. He said, "...at Bethlehem the brethren accounted it an honor to chop wood for the Master's sake. And the fireman felt his post as important as if he were guarding the Ark of the Covenant.

They mix the Savior with his blood into the houring, mowing, washing, spinning, and short into everything. The cattle yard becomes a temple of grace, which is conducted in a priestly manner. Therefore in our economy..." They had a special economy there for missions.

"...the spiritual and the physical are as closely united as a man's body and soul, and each has a strong influence upon the other. As soon as it is not well in a brother's heart, so soon we notice it in his work. But when he is happy in Jesus's wounds, and his love of the Lamb is tender, then one notices that immediately in his outward conduct." He goes on to say, "...each child among us, when it is hardly four years old, spins or picks cotton for the pilgrims, serve the gospel." So even when they're four years old, Count Zinzendorf puts it this way, "...one does not work only so that one can live, but rather one lives so that one can work.

And when one has no more work to do, then one suffers or passes away." These weren't people that were, in Zinzendorf's time, weren't people that were trying to build up their estates or whatever. Everything they did. And again, I see this in this early Anabaptist view of missions.

Discipleship. The thing that they also do, I had on my little chart there, they didn't just go and pass out some tracts, but they went and they taught, teach, and disciple. This is one of the things they did.

After they went, yes, they asked questions. They're very much in bringing them a kingdom, a city in the kingdom, if you would. They're not just there to change their thinking, they're there to usher in the kingdom of God amongst these people.

The Moravian Anabaptists were particularly good at this. The Anabaptists dealt in depth with the concept of making disciples. This article says, "...no other Christian movement between the Apostolic Era and the modern mission period has articulated and demonstrated more clearly the meaning of discipling than the Anabaptists.

The great word rediscovered by the Reformers was Glau, faith. The great word rediscovered by the Anabaptists was Nachfolig Christi, or the followers of Christ. So no one, they maintain, can call Jesus Lord unless he is prepared to follow him in life." Here's a great quote from Harold S. Bender on this concept of discipleship.

I'll give that to you. First and fundamental in the Anabaptist vision was the concept of the essence of Christianity as discipleship. This is from the Anabaptist vision.

It was a concept which meant the transformation of the entire way of life of the individual believer and of society so that it should be fashioned after the teachings and example of Christ. The Anabaptists could not understand a Christianity which made regeneration, holiness, and love primarily a matter of the intellect or doctrinal belief or a subjective experience rather than one of the transformation of life. Repentance must be evidence by newness of life, a new behavior.

In evidence, Bender says, is the keynote which rings through the testimony and challenges of the early Swiss Brethren when they are called to give an account of themselves. The whole life was to be brought literally under the lordship of Christ in his covenant of discipleship. Check that phrase out, his covenant of discipleship.

A covenant which the Anabaptist writers delights to emphasize. The focus of the Christian life was to be not so much an inward experience of the grace of God as it was for Luther, but the outward application of that grace to all human conduct and the consequent Christianization of all human relationships. Wow, that's taking Jesus literally.

The true test of the Christian they held is discipleship. So the essence of Christian life as the Anabaptist understood it is being a disciple, the call. Talk about that call to mission.

This brother wrote here, it is illuminating to note that the Anabaptists placed great emphasis on a specific spiritual gift for the missionary task. Quote, it is God who sends us, but the Holy Spirit who gives to us the apostolic gift for the preaching of the gospel of Christ. Peter Riddemann was particularly, I'm going to read you this passage here in a second, intense with this concept of the Holy Spirit calling the missionary to the word.

Again they said, the Spirit of God tells our spirit that we are called and we must go and preach, for it is for that purpose that he has given us, he has given to us, excuse me, it is for that purpose that he has given us to possess the gift of the Holy Spirit. In with that idea of the calling, they did also have a very clear understanding of the church and the sending. The idea of just running off on your own and being a missionary, I don't know, it wouldn't seem to made a lot of sense to them, unless for some reason that person, you would have had examples of that, but that person would have thought that he was starting the whole church again.

I mean you would have had some of those extremes. But the concept of being a brother in the church and the discipleship that you get within the brotherhood and propagating this kind of thing, we saw the sending idea represented by the Moravian Anabaptists as well, as the Swiss Brethren as well, which the Swiss Brethren, some of them went to Alsace and became what we call the Amish and the later that we talked about yesterday. The other, a large portion of them, came all the way east here to Moravia.

In the early Anabaptist document known as the Schleidheim Confession, remember we went through that, we find the instruction that the local church has a responsibility to choose the right person for the task and it says, quote, whom the Lord has thus appointed. Interestingly, and so this idea of a person receiving a calling to go out and preach the gospel was something that they talked about and it's something that we should encourage. Once the person has been discovered, the congregation publicly confirms their calling.

Okay, I'm gonna read you this one more thing and we're gonna take a quick break before I read you some from Peter Ritteman. Kingdom-based missiology, again, sent by the church. The goal, calling, and desire of Peter Ritteman, the Hutterite there once we get to Moravia with the Moravian Anabaptists, and these radical brethren was Christ and his kingdom.

His heartbeat with the heart of Christ with his appeal to manifest God's kingdom on earth. This kingdom-based missiology caused these early Anabaptist communities to pour out their lives and missions even in the most difficult times of war and persecution. What's more, when they built these missions, they understood that discipling them and all of the teachings of Christ was what was expected of them.

They believed Jesus actually meant it when he said, teaching them to observe all things, all things whatsoever I have commanded of you. What did Jesus really meant every word he said? Remember Conrad Grebel's letter to Vadian and when Vadian was starting to slide and to begin to, in St. Gaul there, just become to compromise, he said, Vadian, I believe in a very simple understanding of Scripture and it's from that that I speak. Remember the other letter he said, the words of Jesus Christ are intended to be, how do you practice, it's intended to be acted upon.

And this idea is their view of what they were bringing to the people. They are bringing the words of Jesus. Can you be a follower of Christ without following Christ? To them it would be absurd.

But somehow the corruption of Augustinian and American evangelicalism, we have allowed our thinking to think that salvation can reside in a choice or a thought in your head and not a transformed, born-again life. A person who's born again will be a follower of Christ and so therefore we're bringing you the glory of what Jesus gave. So understanding some of the, if you would see it as Moravian Anabaptist extremes, understand how they took the words of Jesus and thought about it.

Okay, here's a little experiment you could do for fun. I won't grade you for this. Let's say you take a piece of paper.

Let's say you take a piece of paper and you fold it in half. Put it long ways and fold it in half. And now, let's see if y'all are better artists than me.

You don't have to do this. You can do this tonight just for fun. No grade for this.

On this, this is the coming of Christ. The second coming of Christ, okay? And over here is now and over here is then. Whether you believe in a millennial reign or whether you believe in, however, I think everybody should believe that Christ will reign from the rising of the sun until it's going down.

However, that works out for you. But nevertheless, here let's say is that that kingdom that we're reigning with Christ. Now remember in the Garden of Eden and everything, people worked.

So, you know, you had life. So what is that like? Did you ever let your mind think what is it gonna be like? The most glorious thing is gonna be like that Jesus is there and we're gonna be worshiping him and praising him. But what is it gonna be like? I don't know.

Draw in your mind what it looks like, okay, on this side. Now come on this side of the veil and draw what the world looks like here. And I ask you this question.

What is your relationship from this to this? And can you be, are you now an ambassador of heaven? An ambassador, are you an embassy of the kingdom of God? Are you showing the world what it would look like if everybody would do it Jesus's way? In Jesus's way is the thinking, the eschatological goal that these Moravian Anabaptists, Swiss Anabaptists saw is this is what we're bringing. So to take the words of Jesus away from the gospel is nonsense. It wouldn't even make sense.

We're bringing you Jesus. We're bringing you this great plan he has for all of humanity. He died on the cross for us.

He saved us. And he has this great plan for all of us that one day we're all gonna be doing it with him. One precious day.

All right, let's take a quick break. We'll come back and I'm gonna read you some writings from some of the Moravian Anabaptists in particular. Peter Riddemann, so let's take a look.

Okay, we were talking about the call and the sending of the church to that call. And there's a very good word here by a Moravian Anabaptist, a Hutterite, Peter Riddemann. And this is his view which became the the brethren their view of this whole idea of a person finding that calling and then being sent with that calling.

And here's what he says. This is on Confessions of Faith. It's page 184.

He says for Christ says as the Father has sent me so I send you. Here we learn two things, namely how Christ messengers should be and what their task is. First, as Christ before he was sent by the Father was filled with the Spirit.

So he wants his messengers to be. They shall be blameless and enter into and walk in the power of his Spirit. Second, their task is to gather with or in Christ and be led into the fold of grace so that Christ's flock may be complete.

Again presenting a kingdom, a city in the kingdom when they take it. When Christ wished to send his disciples he first commanded them not to leave Jerusalem until they were clothed with power from on high. That shows us what kind of messenger the Lord's want.

He does not want those who go their own way to please themselves as the Lutherans and papists encourage. Such people choose a fat living with sheep to be shorn. We see how they care for the sheep.

No, the Lord's messenger are chosen beforehand as Aaron was. Quote, if anyone is to go out for the Lord he must be chosen by the Lord and endowed with his power. He must feel the power working in him.

Talking about that calling. He must feel the power working in him. Above all he must let the Lord's power rule over and lead him.

What he does must be in keeping with the Lord's nature and character. Then he will be conformed to his master in word and life and give those who follow an example of blessedness. Such a messenger was Paul who said be imitators of me as I am of Christ.

Everyone who wants to gather with Christ must be of his nature, mind, and spirit. Whoever does not have the spirit of Christ is none of his. How could such a person gather with Christ? Christ himself said if a kingdom is divided against itself the kingdom cannot stand.

Christ's kingdom would soon have to fall if it if he did not send out servants who are like him in nature. He says whoever is not for me is against me and whoever does not gather with me scatters. Again he goes on.

Christ will not permit a messenger. Christ will not permit a messenger, an evangelist, a missionary to go out who is not first clothed with the power of his spirit. Those who feel this power will heed the command of their Lord who has sent them.

They will be able to proclaim to his good pleasure the tidings to bear in his name. Christ won the victory and through his death took away the devil's power over death. When then received all power from the Father as his own words declare quote all authority has been given up to me in heaven and in earth go therefore and teach all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you.

Let us note carefully we what we are commanded. Christ gives us a twofold command. First we should gather with him as those who had been sent by him.

Second we should do our utmost to keep those who are gathered, discipleship, so that they do not again become scattered and torn apart by wolves. Christ's sheep are very dear to him for he has bought them dearly. He wants his shepherds to cherish them.

He commits them to none but those who love him. Wow. His view of missions.

First of all the missionary must feel a calling. No one should be a minister of God, a preacher of God, unless he has the anointing of the Holy Spirit upon him. And this anointing when he's sent out as a missionary we must disciple them to make sure they don't get lost back into the church again.

I mean excuse me into the world again. And so these kind of concepts again are part of the whole way that they go about doing these things. It's powerful.

He wrote that when he was in prison as a missionary. He was in prison as a missionary and fortunately Philip of Hesse, which was one of the more level-headed Reformed guys, gave him a paper. And it's thought that perhaps he was giving a defense to Philip of Hesse of what the Brethren in Moravia believed.

And so he wrote this out for him. And so we have it on record because of that. There's an interesting thing, again I found this from this writing, this article.

The Garner Codex. And if you see on your paper there. And this is an interesting thing of even down to that point where the church is about to commission those spirit-filled missionaries as Peter Rittemann spoke of.

And here it says, the great codex which is found in the Brunner archives describes in some detail an Anabaptist commissioning service. This guy dug up some pretty good stuff for this. First the candidates told the congregation how God had called them into the mission work and to the preaching of the gospel in quote other lands.

This was followed by a session of admonition in which the missionaries asked the congregation to remain faithful to their local task of visiting the sick and the imprisoned, of providing for the poor and unemployed, and of remembering them, the missionaries, with prayers and with material provisions. Then the people of the congregation pledged their support, wished them well, and prayed for God's mercies upon their ministry. Since singing played a significant role from the very inception of the Anabaptist movement, and since hymns were often written for specific occasions, this person has selected and translated several verses from a poem that was actually a song that was sung for a commissioning service.

And I thought I'd give it to you, it's precious. As God his son was sending into this world of sin, his son is now commanding that we this world should win. He sends us and commissions to preach the gospel clear, to call upon all nations to listen and to hear.

To thee, O God, we're praying, we're bent to do thy will. Thy word we are obeying, thy glory we fulfill. All peoples we are telling to mend their sinful way, that they might cease rebelling, lest judgment be their pay.

And if thou, Lord, desire, and should it be thy will, that we taste sword and fire by those who thus would kill, then comfort, pray our loved ones, and tell them we've endured, and we shall see them yonder eternally secured. Powerful, isn't it? Praise God. Thy word, O Lord, does teach us, and we do understand.

Thy promises are with us until the very end. Thou hath prepared a heaven. Praise be thy holy name.

We laud thee, God of heaven, through Christ our Lord. Amen. The brother in this article says, the commissioning ceremony was observed by the entire congregation.

In most cases, the missionaries were married men, leaving wife and children behind, occasionally wives with their husbands, and the event that the missionaries would be executed by sword and fire, and as expressed in the song, the churches was committed to take care of their widows and orphaned children. Wow. These were a people that truly wanted to take the gospel everywhere.

Preach everywhere is the next section I have there. The citizens of Hillebron testified before a court in 1539 that prior to his baptism, he had fled from the Anabaptist as from the devil himself. This is one of those court records that we've been reading about, and he said he used to flee from his Anabaptist as he was a devil for him as, excuse me, fled from the Anabaptist as from the devil himself because of the fervent energy which they sought to persuade him.

That's interesting, just to give you a little glimpse of the passion of these missionaries and these evangelists as they're so desperate to take the gospel to these places that they were so affected. Minnow Simons, we'll get to him finally when we get to Holland. You understand all this during this time now is all going on in Holland as well.

We're just following the Swiss Brethren again to Moravia, and as we did yesterday with the France and all those, but Holland is going on now too, so just keep keeping that back in your mind, and here's a beautiful quote from Minnow Simons. He's talking about preaching. He says, Therefore we preach as much as is possible, both by day and by night, in house and in field, in forest and waste, hither and yon, at home and abroad, in prisons and in dungeon, in water and in fire, on the scaffold and on the wheel, before lords and princes, through mouths and pen, with possessions and blood, with life and death.

We could wish that we might save all mankind from the jaws of hell, free them from the chains of their sin, and by the glorious help of God, add them to Christ by the gospel of his peace. For this is the true nature of the love which is of God. Amen.

Well said, Minnow Simons. Well said. So as they see, they didn't see this just in a particular church building or something like that.

They found this everywhere. One of the articles said, The Anabaptists repudiated the Roman Catholic and Reformed positions that salvation was to be mediated in the hallowed confines of the church sanctuary. In other words, they were everywhere with this.

For them, there was no dichotomy between the sacred and the secular. Again, don't lose this point. Remember when I talked way back about the early church and we talked about the eighth day? Anybody remember that when I tried my singing thing and I went to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7? Okay, yeah, now you remember.

Okay. The concept there with the early church, and a lot of these people, is we end up living in this perpetual Sabbath. See, all of the law was expanded by Christ to an ultimate fulfillment in the kingdom that he was presenting.

The Sabbath teachings in the early church, when they talked about the concept of ushering in the eighth day, is that we live in a perpetual Sabbath. The arguments that Jesus gave for breaking the Sabbath, like the priest, remember, was that, well, the priest defiled the the shoebread when David was coming through. In other words, if you had a priestly function to do, then that was a justification that Jesus gave.

To the early church, to these Moravian Anabaptists, to the Swiss Brethren, all of life was entering and living in a perpetual Sabbath of living unto God and this eighth day. You were a priest. And everybody, again, whether you're a mom at home, whether you're a miller or whatever, it all went for this purpose of glorifying God.

Okay, this person goes on. For them there was no dichotomy between the sacred and secular. Whether fleeing for their lives or simply traveling in search of employment, the Anabaptists everywhere addressed the spiritual and social needs around them in a holistic approach to evangelism that took especially the Sermon on the Mount seriously.

Think about it. I had some of you write a paper if you did something just the opposite of the Sermon on the Mount, but produce a society that is the Sermon on the Mount living out in this world. In this wicked generation, you are living a Sermon on the Mount existence here.

Wow, what does that look like? In this society, apparently the poor says, rejoice. Those that are rich says, oh no. Those that want to live for their own lives say, oh no.

Those who want to give up everything and follow Christ, rejoice. There's something in that. Again, people have explained it in different ways and I don't in any way want to imply a legalistic type of this.

The Sermon on the Mount was given to us not as another law, but as a cure for the evils of this world and an exciting blueprint for the kingdom of God. We see different approaches even in the scriptures of people putting this into practice, but nevertheless taking it and meaning it. So as this person says in the Sermon on the Mount seriously, moreover, because of the uncompromising Anabaptist emphasis on the priesthood of all believers, every believer was under duty to fulfill the Great Commission.

Each convert to Anabaptism was commissioned to preach the gospel at his or her baptisms. This leads to this next quote, even the women. What about I'm at home, I have my children.

What about that, girls? You know, it's interesting to see that a lot of this sharing of the gospel was done when they were getting their their meal, you know, and the Anabaptist ladies were sharing this and these types of things. Several of them traveled with their their husbands, but a lot of times they didn't, and just the persecution or the self-martyrdom of leaving your husband or your husband leaving you with an 80% chance that he was going to be dead in those days as a missionary. 80% chance.

I mean that was quite a sacrifice. But not only that, the evangelism of these ladies to other ladies became so talked about that they actually had to start writing rules about that as well. Here's a few examples.

The most sociologically striking, this person is writing, was the active role Anabaptists allowed for women in sharing their faith. Again, we clearly see that they had different roles with ministry, but an active sharing their faith, just like we saw with in the Book of Acts, that these ladies shared what was on their hearts. Allowed for women who were also given the task of evangelism.

This is illustrated by the Württemberg government's decision that, quote, here's one of those little court records, the propaganda activity of Anabaptist women through word and mouth and through booklets, passing out tracts at the Water Will, was so grievous that those, quote, mothers who could not be banished because of their little children must be chained at home to prevent their leading so many people astray. Amen! Isn't that powerful? Actually, to pass a mandate concept that you have to chain these women down because they're sharing their faith so much. Praise the Lord.

Of course, this didn't prevent visitors who could have visit them, this person wrote. The Martyr's Mirror illustrates this evangelical passion of an Anabaptist woman. One of the friends of Wiencken, a widow from, I won't even try, who was about to be burnt to death at the Hague in 1527, pled with this Anabaptist saying this, so with all of my babbling there, so there's a lady about to be burned at the stake and there's other lady trying to rebuke her and she says, Dear Mother, can you not think what you please? Dear Mother, you can think what you please, but if you could keep it to yourself, then you will not die.

If you would just think what you please, you can have your theologies, then you will not die. The Anabaptist martyr replied, Dear Sister, I am commanded to speak and am constrained to do so, hence I cannot remain silent about it. And she was sharing her faith.

Powerful men, women, young people, we saw young ones catching the same spirit. So this is impressive, I think, of looking at understanding some of those things. F. H. Littell in his book The Anabaptist Theology of Missions points out some of the marks of this early Anabaptist missions, and one, they rejected the parish pattern and coercion for Pauline methods of persuasion and faith in which the proper order was first, preach, secondly believe, and then to baptize.

Do you know what he means by rejecting the parish pattern? We talked about that. Again, do you remember the the Reformers believed that the church was a geographical area? So if you have, for instance, here in Pennsylvania, you have counties, and each of those counties, here's Lancaster County, would be a parish. That would be an area.

When you go through Louisiana, they actually, if you notice, anybody driven through Louisiana, they still call their counties parish from the Catholic influences of that state. But the idea then was this was the church. The parish is the church.

Now Luther and Calvin and Zwingli would have said, okay, there's an invisible known to God of Christians, but the church is this parish, is this area that the king, we have this balance between the way their view of two kingdoms, we have a king and we have a priest and they work together or a pastor and that becomes a two kingdom. The Anabaptists said, no, it's like this. Like here, I drew here.

This world ran by all of its evil laws, evil ways, its evil passions, and everything, and we are meant to infiltrate this evil age, this evil world, with the kingdom of God, with the kingdom of God. On that thought, there's an interesting quote. It just hit me.

In Hebrews 6, I think it's Hebrews 6, where you know that passage where they're talking about, where the writer of Hebrews is talking about how it's impossible to renew a person who has abandoned these things. Where is that? Okay, here it is. In Hebrews 6, chapter 4, give you kind of an idea here, for it is impossible, Hebrews 6, chapter 4, for it is impossible for those who were once enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away to renew to them again.

A person who has actually caught the concept, the beautiful concept of being partakers of the world to come, that's the other side of the veil. That's over here, but we are becoming partakers of this world now, the kingdom now, and that idea is the idea that the early Anabaptist said, that's what we're doing with our mission understanding here, kingdom now. And it's a now and it's a not yet, because we will have its complete fulfillment then.

So both scriptures that, some scriptures talk about it as coming, some scriptures talk about it now, and it's a now. We experience it now in a seed form, but one day, hallelujah, we'll have it in its totality as we worship Christ. That was one, they reject the parish pattern.

Two, they interpreted the Great Commission's go ye therefore as applying to all believers at all time. At this time nobody was. Three, the lay believer became the carrying power of the movement.

And four, they had a supreme confidence in the power of God so that the suffering of the martyr church was its authentication and believe that, sorry, it was the idea that they were martyrs that was giving them proof of what they were doing. They were on God's side. Powerful, powerful stuff.

They knew who the enemy was. I'll get down here in eight. You know, as we go through these things and we can get into our mind, it's so easy to just to start drift down one way or the other, your mind thinking a wrong way.

And the brotherhood was very big into the course of discipleship, but also encouraging each other. You must keep going. We must keep standing firm.

It's the same kind of vocabulary we receive with Paul. Do not grow weary in good doing. And it's this kind of same spirit that they had.

Here's an interesting quote from a Hutterite school teacher become evangelist and missionary in the early ones. And he's talking about just this whole concept of a way to think about life. He says, many in our time think the opposition has ended.

We could apply that today. Many of our time think the the trouble, the persecution, the opposition has ended. Perhaps this is from when the grossest part of the persecution is over.

They look back and think the war is over, but they are deceived. If they would live the life, they would be persecuted again. Wow.

What about us? If they would live the life, they would be persecuted again. As long as the lion has its cubs with him, he might act friendly and playful enough. As long as the lion has its cubs with him, he might act friendly and playful enough.

But when he loses his little ones or his prey, he cannot keep himself back. He rages and roars. He rants and he raves as only lions can until fire shoots from his eyes.

Certainly Peter does not warn us in vain that Satan comes upon us like a roaring lion or a wolf at nightfall. But may God be praised. The lion of the tribe of Judah is bigger and stronger than the lion of the Philistines.

He has already split the other lion's head and wounded his body. Therefore he knows that his time is short and he will soon be overcome. Therefore he is so desperate, so angry, he sees the lake of fire into which he will be thrown.

Watch yourself therefore, heroes of Israel. Take courage, strong men of Zion. Rejoice, O city of Jerusalem.

The time of your triumph is near. All tears will be washed from your eyes. The reward of your labor stands ready.

Just hold on a little while longer. The fat cattle have already been butchered. The fowls have all been plucked.

The tables stand ready, and the guests have begun to arrive. Amen. You hear his point there that as long as the lion has her cubs, she's perfectly happy.

You start getting converts. Start taking some Islam converts. Start taking some people in different capacities, and suddenly you'll see a lion rise up.

Start taking them even out of worldliness and out of this world in America, and you'll start to see persecution arise again. But if we just let them keep their little cubs, everything is happy. What a graphic example.

What a graphic example. So that is the frame, if I may, as the way I read this. You'll see the passion of the Moravian Anabaptists, which becomes the Hutterites and the different Swiss Brethren communities that are there in Moravia.

And it's in that frame that I would like to put these different views that they had, and some of them are stretching. But again, I see other movements through time that does things like this. Tomorrow I'll try to bring up some quotes, some very strong quotes on economics.

Again, none of us have to do anything that they're suggesting, but if you see this, it'll make you understand what they're talking about instead of thinking they just want some kind of kumbaya session where everybody fills around and throws money in a pot and makes himself feel good. That's not at all the spirit of what I see from the Moravian Anabaptists. I see a purpose, a church with a vision, a church with a purpose.

I'll give you one thing here, and then I guess we'll close. I'll let a few questions. Again, in my article when I was studying the Zinzendorf Moravians, 200 years later from these people, at Bethlehem, a commitment to join the mission outpost at Bethlehem, which is just a few miles, about an hour drive north of me there in Ephrata, if you wanted to come to church at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 1740, here's what you'd have to sign.

This was the document you had to sign and the commitment that Zinzendorf required to be the church in Bethlehem. This is 200 years after the Anabaptists here there with Zinzendorf, and here's what it was. They signed this contract.

We all belong to the Savior as he is Lord, and what we have that all belongs to him, and he shall depose of it as he pleases him. We do not accordingly regard ourselves as manservants or maidservants, whom serve some man for the sake of wage, and who might demand hire or pay for their labor, but we are here as brethren and sisters who owe themselves to the Savior and for his sake. We declare, therefore, not only in general but also in particular, each one for himself, that we do not for this time nor for the future pretend to any wage or have reason to pretend to any.

We have received into this said economy with no idea of having, taking, or seeking wage, the economy having dedicated itself to the service of the Savior and with no promise that wage or pay should be given. We, on the contrary, regard it a mark of grace that we are here and may labor according to the above stated intention." Interesting. Now they would have they would have did not have any doctrine of accumulation, I mean doctrine of, they weren't Hutterites by any stretch of the imagination, but when a group gets on fire with a passion you begin to see people start to look at these things of the earth grow strangely dim.

So any quick questions or comments? We have a few minutes since obviously I'm not going to make it to Nickelsburg today. I'll blame it on the fire alarm. What are your thoughts? Look at the zeal of the Swiss brethren and now we're coming over to Moravia and just your thoughts on some of that.

Good point, Dale. Okay, Dale brought up the point, what about leaving your wife and children? Is that, was that too far? Was that too far? What do you think about that? Lucas said you should know I'm doing it this these five weeks. Yeah, ouch.

Okay, I do think you're right, Brother Dale. I think that, you know, I have to wonder about Conrad Grebel's wife, poor Barbara. You know, I have to wonder about poor John Wesley's wife.

I have to wonder about some of these situations. In my article with the Moravians, again these are the Zinzendorf Moravians, he, they would have, you had to be married to go in some of those mission fields. They made a rule you had to be married and when they were going up to the to the ones up in Iceland and or Greenlands rather and in all these different far-off countries they had a wife with them and many times they lost a lot of their wives but they had a name for those weddings.

They called them militant marriages and for the purpose that they were going into battle, into warfare. But yeah, I think, you know, but let's consider our wives and God's teaching on that. Paul did give us some warning and unfortunately in our circles, and we're not going to change this, we have a low view of single brothers zealously on fire for the Lord and going out.

Paul, I think, has some pretty strong words that if you're called to a zealous purpose that it'd probably be best if you didn't get married. So, I don't know. I'm not going to change that in my time but that that is something we deal with.

But good, good thought, Dale. Other thoughts? Yes, sir? Right, right. But if you cross a veil there and the Scriptures brings up the word apostasy.

I would get one of these Greek scholars in here, the idea and also the concept that there is, in Hebrews 10 gives us the same idea, that there is no other sacrifice. There is nothing else than Christ for our salvation. There is no other way.

And so if you think you can find another way, he's it. But yeah, it's a strong passage and I try to make it a pattern in my life not to anesthetize strong passages to make myself feel better, but to say ouch to them and say, Lord, you know, give me the grace. But yeah, you bring up a good point about some of these people who turned their back and actually tasted that.

I mean, remember we talked about it, was it the first day, this kingdom understanding of salvation. Jesus says in John 3 16 and in the whole build-up of John there that if you're not born again you can't even see the kingdom. And unless you're born again you can't enter the kingdom.

But notice it's a means to an end. It's not just a mental faith to say, I'm born again. It brings us to the kingdom.

And a genuine person has tasted of the worlds to come and is an ambassador of heaven. It's showing forth Christ here to this age in a wicked age what it will someday be. And if you tasted that and rejected that, right.

So there was a line there that they did not cross, you're saying. Exactly. Yeah, I think well said.

Well said, yeah. And you know I've typically said in dealing with these difficult passages and sometimes as we've counseled people about the Holy Spirit, sitting against the Holy Spirit, it's a common answer, but I don't think it's a bad one, is that the conviction that we still have that you're concerned about those things is some indication of the pricking of the Holy Spirit in your conscience. That the scary thing is when you wake up one day and you just don't care.

And then that's a bad spot because it's too late. You just don't care. And I have in my journey seen brothers push back and sisters that have pushed back and it breaks my heart.

And I remember a guy came and met me one day and he was walking with us in our fellowship and everything. He came up and not just left conservatism or whatever, he just said, I no longer believe in Jesus. And I was so astounded.

I just couldn't even imagine how that's even possible. How does the world even make sense? But he had stepped over that line you're talking about, Jacob. Any other thoughts? Real quick, out of time, but any other thoughts? Okay.