(The Markstein) - Part 3, Early Anabaptist Hutterite Missions

We thank you, Lord, for your mercy on our lives, thank you for the grace of God, thank you for the blood sacrifice for our sins, we throw ourselves onto you, Lord, and say have mercy on us. Lord, we want to renew our commitment to you today, we want to renew our hearts, and we ask you to fill us with your Holy Spirit and you empower us like we read of the days of old, Lord. You do the work inside of us, so God, please give us a chance again in this generation, give us a chance. Lord, let us be inspired and convicted that these men died, these men and women died for these things. Let us not just take them for granted and just live our lives, but be also faithful, Thank you, Father. Please be with this message in Jesus' name. Amen. We were talking about missions. I remember the first time I gave this message to a Hutterite audience, this Hutterite young man came to me, probably about 12 or 13, and he said, you know what? I've always known that Hutterites died good, but I never knew we ever did any of it. And I said, ouch. So, in other words, it's good for us to lift up the faithfulness during persecution, the martyrs, it's incredible. I mean, it's inspiring, but it's also good for us to look into why they got martyred. What was it that was making the people so angry? But here's the thing that I'm hoping that somehow these topics will start to blend together, and you'll understand that Christ came into this world and he wants to save us, but he wants to save us for a reason, and that's to spread his kingdom over the whole earth. And with that, he does not want us involved with the answers and the kingdom of this world, but he wants us involved there. And here's a verse that really hit me as an evangelical of understanding why he even saves us, and it's actually in Ezekiel. Let me read this to you before we start this. Ezekiel chapter 36. Prophecy about the new covenant. And when they entered unto the heathen, Ezekiel 36 verse 20, and when they entered into the heathen, okay, I'm sorry, let's back it up to verse 19. This is Jesus, I mean, God's talking about a rebuke, but then why he's going to save them. And I scattered them among the heathen, and they were dispersed through the countries, according to their way, and according to the doings I judged them. And when they entered into the heathen, wherever they went, everywhere they went, they profaned my holy name, when they said to them, these are the people of the Lord, and are gone forth from his land. Listen, but I had pity for my holy name, which the house of Israel hath profaned among the heathen everywhere they went. Therefore saying to the house of Israel, thus saith the Lord God, and don't miss this, I do not this for your sins. I'm not going to do this. It's not about you, O house of Israel, but for my holy name's sake, which you have profaned among the heathen everywhere you went. And I will sanctify my great name, which was profaned among the heathen, which you have profaned in the midst of them, and the heathen shall know that I am the Lord, saith the Lord God, when I shall be sanctified in you before their eyes. For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land, it's the kingdom of God, and I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean. From your filthiness and from your idols I will cleanse you, and a new heart will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you, and I will take away that old stony heart, and put in a heart of flesh, and I will write my alms upon your heart, and cause you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and judgments. Do you see the whole point of our salvation? It's not about us. It's not about getting to heaven. It's about bringing glory to God. And so as we look through this, and we look through this thing, I'm hoping that missions doesn't look like to you just one more thing you tack on as a hobby horse to some weird doctrine. It all flows together in our kingdom theology, and our kingdoms, and our salvation, and our desire to bring glory to God to all nations. All right. So let's look into this. It's a little bit about my family, and this was my passion for community. I was reading these stories in history and thinking, if you can do that. Again, coming from my army background and all that, and the camaraderie that I craved to have, and I would read about these community missions thinking, if you can do that, fuck all. And so here's my book again. It's fortunately, it's been translated in several different languages. It's been translated in Spanish, and into Polish, and just recently, Cam translated it into Arabic. And so it's been a blessing to be able to use that in the mission field, particularly when we were over in Greece. This is my wife. We did a talk once about our testimony and about the two kingdoms, and she's been an incredible blessing. Dragging that poor girl from New York into our talk, as you can imagine, and everything in between. So she's been wonderful. It's been a blessing, and it's been a journey. And so through that, I've had a passion for following radicals' examples, following Jesus in history. This was a tour we took with Peter Hoover, going through different places in Germany, different little communities. Peter was really, of course, known, here's an early one from the 1200s, the Friends of God. Here was where the Amman colonies came from in the 1600s. This is where John Huss was a son. And this, of course, is one of my favorite groups, the Moravians, Zinzendorf was there. Interesting, in the 1800s, the Hutterites went to this place to get encouragement, and there was actually quite a lot of interaction between the Moravians and the Hutterites in the 1800s. And this is the place of the very first Hutterite colony, and Mr. Fitch checked with public today. Are those Hutterite buildings? No, those aren't. That's the town hall where it was. This is a Moravian, Zinzendorf Moravian colony, mission colony, and they would meet like this and just passionately spread the gospel to the interior. This is the one in Bethlehem. This one I didn't live far from. I have a little documentary to try to get you a copy of. It is on the internet. It's called the Moravian Mission Machine, it's what I wrote before, the Hutterite Mission Machine, and just to see their zeal of everything in their life dedicated to serving God. I studied them first and came to understand that the Hutterites actually did it before them, 200 years before them, the same passion. This is a mission community in Germany, a statue of, of course, Zinzendorf there. That's God's acre. Interesting, in the Moravians, they would plant, they would put all these graves in there, and on Easter Sunday, they would all stand around the graveyard and sing to the lamb and proclaiming a day when the, when the church on the earth will join the church in the heaven and they will all praise the lamb together. It's a powerful place to be. That's the one in Hörnquist, Germany. That's the, these were the staffs of the ships that they then used for their church meeting hall, and this is, this is that building right here. Again, a Moravian one, very much inspired. Anybody tell me this place? Elkenstein. Elkenstein. Incredible. And so when you look at the Hutterites when I began to see them, first, particularly considering we don't have as many documents, I mean it's 200 years before the Moravians almost, and when you start to look at the systematic passion and the persecution that they, they witnessed to do it, just absolutely incredible. And that's why I finally came to name the early Hutterites as the Marine Corps of the Anabaptists. It was, it's an inspiring story. So Peter helped me a lot through that, and yeah, it's been a blessing. Salvation Army. Little known fact, William Booth, towards the end of his life when he was really trying to encapsulate how could we do it all, came up with this book that he wrote, and this was a pull-out of the book, and he shows that he wanted to have, this says, I'll get a close-up, he had the farm colony and the city colony. So he wanted to have the different places, let me go back up again, so he saved people out of the world, which was his plan, get them out of, it says, betting, gambling, you know, prostitution, all of this, and make places in England that they could be trained and discipled, get them jobs, and then he also made it where they would then have a farm community area where people could study and, you know, get off drugs, get off alcohol, this type of a thing, and then he had it where he had colonies across the sea and bought parts of Africa and things, and he pulled this off. All the way up to 1912 he was doing this hardly ever mentioned in the history of the Salvation Army, and he had a passion for being, he actually pulled this off, there's still communities there in England that are remnants of this, of what he planned to do. John Wesley has always been very inspiring to me, and this quote from him really encapsulates my passion for community missions, and he says this, I continue to dream and pray about a revival of holiness in our day that moves forth in mission and creates authentic community in which each person can be unleashed through the empowerment of the Spirit to fulfill God's creational intentions. And I'm full. It's a blessing. So the, I believe the evangelical world, when they look at missions, I have a whole sermon that talks about the awakening that's happening, even in the conservative evangelicals, saying we miss the church in missions. One of them says, a famous quote, everywhere we seem to have missions and there's no church, and everywhere else we have churches and there's no mission. It shouldn't be this way. The church, the kingdom, is the way God has used to spread His ways and His salvation to the earth. And the interesting, a Dallas Theological Seminary scholar, George Peters is his name, talked about where this mistake happens, and it happened way back in Zwingli, and he says how the Anabaptists differed from this from the beginning. So Anabaptists, let's talk about that. Again, it's not a denomination. I'm not talking to anybody to join the Anabaptists. It's a way of thinking. It's a hermeneutic, it's a biblical interpretation. It literally means one who baptizes or rebaptizes. It's one who baptizes the biblical leaders. Where do the Anabaptists come from? We know that in 1517, Martin Luther officially initiated into the Protestant Reformation these incredible things for us, just being able to stop the tyranny of Rome, to get the Bible into a language that we can read. The same thing was happening then over the Reformation in Switzerland. Anybody know who this is? You got it, guys. Luke Zwingli, and this is where the young Anabaptists were truly converted by his good preaching. He was one of the first to do expository preaching, which means just preaching through the word of God, and these men were converted. And he brought in lots of impact and change in the city of Zurich. But finally, as the young men began to study, they began to ask and challenge things. The scriptures then were given into the common language. I did read once that the Froschauer Bible, which was the Swiss Bible, they first got the Psalms and Proverbs, then they got the Gospels, and then later the Epistles were translated. And I just wonder if that emphasis, even in the way they received the scripture, helped give them a focus on Jesus Christ. It's just a personal theory. So here we are. The land is Switzerland, and this is Zurich right here. And we'll kind of show this. And right here, this is the modern-day Grossmünster. And to show you what the kind of area, this is where basically Anabaptism started. That's Peter walking there in the Grossmünster. Interesting, this is that statue there. It's Charlemagne, who is kind of the symbol of state church, which is where this was broke from. In the door you see they have the Reformation door on there. And they give this history of the Anabaptists, and here you can see that they tell the story of the Reformation and what it went. And here it is, the early Anabaptists hearing from Zwingli, and then finally saying the famous quote, what does the state have to do with the church, and why does the state – we're not going to wait for the state to translate our Bible and that type of thing, and the Anabaptists started. Oryx Zwingli becomes the symbol of church and state together, with his statue still today. You can see his scripture and cross, just giving a symbol. And of course, he died in the battlefield, fulfilling the promise that he would live by the sword and die by the sword. This is the courthouse where the early Anabaptists were arrested. And Conrad Grebel, anybody can remember when he wrote his letter to his friend in St. Gall, I think it was, there's two elements that I picked out of that letter that I think were essence to early Anabaptism. Number one, I believe the word of God without a complicated interpretation, and out of that, I speak. And the other one was what? The teaching of the Lord has been given, the purpose of being put into practice. That's so simple, but it's so true. In other words, I was teasing him, so he's making an Anabaptist study Bible, I said It says like in Matthew, it says to love your enemies, and I would have a line that says, what it really means, to love your enemies, means to love your enemies. When it talks about marriage or head coverings, it means to cover your head. So these plain things of scripture, the scriptures were intended for us to read them as a child, and I think that they're important. And so is his teachings on spreading his kingdom. So dream of him. What if Jesus really meant to have a dream of the Lord, he said. One of the things that we're calling this, remember, is Mark's study. I want to get to the essence of what started the Hutterites in the first place, and it was this entire dependence upon Jesus Christ, and putting his words into practice in our life and in the world around us. So eventually, as we know, in 1527, they put to death Felix Mons at this place at the river. Only ten years later, after the Protestant Reformation with all its glory started, ten years later, the Protestants themselves put to death the first Anabaptist by drowning him in a crystal clear water. On January 5th, 1527, Felix Mons was sentenced to death. Why? It's interesting to know why. We have it. So, you know, the hear ye, hear ye. They would have read from their churches and wrote in their journals, and we get to know. Interesting, we have a letter from the far east side of Switzerland, and Felix Mons was caught in prison. He went out and escaped from prison. But as soon as he escaped from prison, he didn't hide. This is what he did. So they captured him, and they wrote a letter to Zurich saying, listen, for a long time we've had among us a man who calls himself Felix Mons. The same has created much trouble and discord among our people because he is baptizing old people and he's corner preaching. Baptizing old people means non-infants, you know, and corner preaching. To such an extent that we ordered him to leave the city. After this, he returned and did it again. This is regarding the public proclamation of the church forbidding adult baptism on penalty of death, loss of honor, and loss of property. Why? Did Felix Mons feel compelled after such mandates to keep preaching? Can anybody tell me why? The kingdom mandate. Because Jesus commanded it. If we're going to say we're Jesus' followers, he had to. That's the key. Therefore we arrested him and held him a few days, but because he's an obstinate and recalcitrant person, well that's a five dollar word, we released him from prison, and because he's one of yours, we have sent him to you with a friendly request that you look after him and keep him into your own territory so that we may be rid of him and our people remain quiet, and that in case he is to return, we are not compelled to take severe measures against him. But he kept preaching and wouldn't change, and so finally they sentenced him to death. And this is the proclamation of why they sentenced Felix Mons to death. Written from the newly born again, so-called, Protestant Reformation, only ten years after its beginning, sentenced him to death for these reasons. Okay, this probably won't work. Such a nice build-up to it. Okay. Okay, because he, I know it's too good of a quote. I'm going to read it to you like this. Okay. Here we go. Because contrary to Christian order and custom, he has become involved in anabaptism and accepted it, taught others, and became a leader and beginner of these things, because he has confessed having said that he wanted to gather those who wanted to accept Christ and follow him and unite himself with them through baptism and let the rest live according to their faith, so that he and his followers separated themselves from the Christian church, were about to rise up and prepare a sect of their own under the guise of a Christian meeting. Those are bad things. Because he condemned capital punishment, he was non-resistant. Since such a doctrine is harmful to the unfamed usage of all Christendom, and leads to offense and insurrection and sedition against the government, and the shattering of the common peace and brotherly love and civil cooperation, and to all evil, Mons shall be delivered to the executor, he shall tie his hands, put him into a boat, take him into the lower hut, he shall strip his bound hands down over his knees, place a stick between his knees and arms, and thus push him into the water, and let him perish in the water, thereby he shall have atoned to the law and justice, his property shall also be confiscated from him." Wow. Wow. There it is. And they drew a picture of it. That's an actual picture that they wrote in some of the journals in Zurich today. So, here's the thing. So, as they were there, so here's Zurich, the next day after this happened, they spread it to Zolkona Revival, and then from here, they went up to here, and started sharing the gospel. Why? With such persecution. Middle Simons also has a great quote, he says, "...for true evangelical faith cannot lie dormant, but manifests itself in all righteousness and works of love. It clothes the naked, feeds the hungry, consoles the afflicted, shelters the miserable, aids and consoles all the oppressed, returns good for evil, serves those that injure it, and prays for those that persecute it." He said this, speaking of this call from Christ to preach, he said, "...therefore we preach as much as possible, both by day and by night, in house and in fields and in forest and in waste, hither and yonder, in home and abroad, in prisons and in dungeons, in water and in fire, on the scaffold and on the wheel," that's the persecution wheel, the Heterochronicles talks a lot about, "...before lords and princes, through mouth and pen, with possessions and with blood, with life and death. We wish that we might save all mankind from the jaws of hell, free them from the chains of their sins, and by the gracious help of God, add them to Christ by the gospel of his peace. For this is the true nature of the love of God which is in Christ." So just getting started, 1527 happened in January, by February they went to Schleidheim and made the Schleidheim Confession. By August, they're meeting in Augsburg and 60 ministers now, it's grown to 60 ministers of the Anabaptists meet there and start deciding how they're going to do missions all over the world. Now here's the thing, of those 60 ministers that were there, early missionaries, in five years, how many were left? Two were left. That's why this thing is called the Martyrs' Synod. So if you were a missionary in 1527, there is your chance of survival. You have a 5% chance of survival, you have a 95% kill rate of the missionaries in 1527. What are you doing? Why are you doing this? So they've been going over the martyrs' mirrors full of these stories. Our Conrad Chronicles are full of these stories of these people. If they could just be quiet. And interestingly, there's a few letters. Here from the martyrs' mirror, someone asked one of the ladies that were being dragged out to be martyred, and she said, Dear Mother, can't you just think what you please and keep it to yourself and you won't die? The lady replied, Dear Sister, I am commanded to speak, and constrained to do so, hence I cannot remain silent about it. Now they were preachers, but even when they were at the mill and at the different place, they would tell people about Christ and he carried off into persecution. I love this one. In a court record in Gertenburg, they found a document that tells them, what are we going to do with these Anabaptist women? We can't shut them up. And it says, the government decision that the propaganda activity of Anabaptist women through word and mouth and through booklets, tracts, 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. Praise God. Wow. Just by passing out little papers, you're there to pick up your stuff, your grain for the day, and there it was. So here it is. So then they started going. So from here to here, you look at a map and you go, well, that's not bad. This is what they're crossing on foot. And it's like, wow. When you're driving around there, this is what I just took out of my car. It's amazing seeing these places where they carry people. So here we get to a place, and now this is Goofy Down, Italy. This is the very spot where finally George Blaurock, who was one of the original three there in Zurich, the most boisterous of the one, was burned at the stake right here. Now, Peter Walpott, one of the early bishops, leaders of the Hutterites, and one of the leaders of turning the Hutterites into the mission machine, was a nine-year-old boy standing right there. He's the one that wrote this. He watched George Blaurock being burned at the stake at nine years old. At that spot. At that spot. Watched him. And later he becomes converted. Later he becomes, joins the early Hutterites, becomes a bishop, and becomes a leader of the mission machine that turned it into. Absolutely incredible. That's how he started his young life, watching that. It was war. Not a playground. So in 1527, started in 1525, where he got two years of evangelism, where in 1527 Lichtenstein in Moravia opened up his kingdom for the Anabaptists to come in. In two years, we started from three guys, two years, 12,500 people sold their properties and lands and moved to Moravia. Kind of impressive. This is a spot in Triole, it's in the Tyrolean areas, where in this very place, there was a little booth here where little gospel tracts were handed over to early Anabaptists, early Christians in this very spot. This is where Jacob Wicker came from. It's massive. 1526, now the Muslims are coming up and jihading against Europe. Hungary falls in 1526. 1527, because the Pope didn't pay his debts, they turned and it turned out Rome is falling. Bandits took over the whole thing. The Pope is hiding. Rome is falling. Now, sooner or later, the Muslims decide to call a jihad against Europe. As soon as we make it over to Vienna, the jihad of the Muslim advance is right there. Kind of a bad time. He leads his army, he attacks, tries to attack Vienna. In this, the kings there in Austria says, OK, we've got Muslims coming against us, this is crazy. Everybody, every man must carry the sword, because if the Muslims come, we've got to be ready. Didn't you hear that today? We'd better keep our guns, because if the Muslims come, we'd better be ready. It was there. They came, and out of that 12,000, now we've been given a little nation. Liechtenstein actually himself got converted, he got baptized again. But they started to think, we could probably do this with the government. They didn't think it'd work. So one of the leaders of the Anabaptists switched and started defending the sword, and wrote a book on the sword. And out of those 12,000, they all believed it, and they started accepting the sword and then turning the little Arabia into an Anabaptist nation. Short-lived. But of those 12,000, 200 said, Jesus said, we can't go to war. Jesus said to love your enemies. Well, you've got 12,000 of your brethren saying, can't you? No, I'm sorry. We're going to follow Jesus. So 200 said, we're out of here. They kicked him out, and they were out completely in the middle of nowhere. This 200, the whole movement now has come down to this 200. And they got out there in the middle of nowhere. One guy threw his coat on the ground and said, what do you got? Everyone started throwing their money in. And that was the start of the Ottomans. Said, we're just going to be faithful. We're just going to live. We're going to work this out. We're going to see what we can do. And we're going to keep going. Solomon did not end up taking. God defended Vienna. And if you look at the history, it was miraculous. It was miraculous that he didn't do. And so here's what it says in the chronicle. These men spread out with a cloak in front of the people. And each one laid his possessions on him with a willing heart, without being forced, so that the needy might be supported in accordance with the teachings of the prophets and the apostles. A small band petitioned the rulers of Hostulitz, Moravia, thinking of occupying one of the old burned-out farms. The Lord enthusiastically accepted them. Starting out poor and weak, the brethren in Hostulitz molded themselves after the Book of Acts and set up a little settlement with full community of goods. So what do you do next? What's the right thing to do? It's 1528. What a year. I mean, that's a lot. 1527 was a busy year. The end of that revival always started. It's 1528. You're out there now. What do you do? Okay, what do you say? Do they rest? No. No. All right, that's what I would have done. Be high? No. That's what I would have done. Do you hold a seminar? Now that's what I would have done. Hold a seminar. Do you talk about these things? No. So what do the early Hutterites do? Do they go? Yes. Guys, give it a rest. What do you mean you go? Amazingly, right from the beginning, the little group started following Jesus' command to reach out. The Hutterite Chronicles records this. As the members of the church began to increase in number, the zeal and divine grace moved them to send brothers out to other countries, especially to Tyrol. I wonder who they picked up in Tyrol. The mother of all fooders. There it was. So eventually an anointed missionary and preacher from Tyrol named Jacob Hooter joined the brethren. His leadership skills were quickly recognized, and Jacob Hooter helped to give the new group much-needed organization and vision. Many noticed his influence, and soon the brethren were being labeled from others outside of them as Hutterites because of his leadership. Jacob Hooter was a leader for only two years. That's right, Jacob Hooter was only a leader for two years. But what he accomplished in that time was substantial. Perhaps the most significant thing that Jacob Hooter contributed to the movement was a laser-sharp vision with the organizational skills to back it up. And Jacob ended his life heroically. Being sent on a mission trip to his hometown in Tyrol, Austria, he could just mind his own business or tended to church problems. They had a lot of them. Jacob fell into the hands of his persecutors. In February 1536, Jacob was taken to Innsbruck and severely tortured and interrogated. When they saw that Jacob would not deny the faith, he was taken to the city square and burned at the stake. Incredible. Okay, so what do you do when you just get started and your gifted leader just got killed? What do you do? You go. You keep going. Why? Following the lead of Jacob Hutter, a new type of leaders emerged in the Hutterites with an even greater zeal to spread the kingdom of God to the ends of the earth. The high ideas and rare dedication to the words of Jesus attracted gifted men. Let me tell you a saying. You attract who you are. Listen to that. You attract who you are. And so when these people became zealous, other people that were zealous, I want to get in on that. And they started to attract the people, people like you. This infused this new movement with talent and exceptional leadership. Kingdom-based missiology. The goal calling and desire of Peter and his radical brother was Christ and his kingdom. His heartbeat with the heart of Christ with the appeal to manifest God's kingdom to the unearthed. This kingdom-based missiology caused the early Anabaptists to pour their lives into mission, even in the most difficult times of war and persecution. What's more, when they built these missions, they understood that discipling them in all the teachings of Christ was what was expected of them. They believed Jesus actually meant what he said, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever under the command of God. Now, this is from the Midnight Encyclopedia. Now, I've lived in the community for five years. Okay, I know we do things by kind of the clock. I was asking some brothers last night, especially you ladies, you all do. You know when it's time to start making the pickles, right? You get the cucumbers, you get the pickles going. In your mind right now, you could kind of say, I kind of know when that's going to happen. For us, you know, we hear that speaker going off in the house, and, oh, ladies, it's time to go do the pickles. And I'm like, oh, okay, I was doing something else. But you intuitively know. Well, the different things that we do, there's kind of a season to it. Well, community-like, the Hutterites knew to do this right, we're going to organize it. And just like we know when it's time to do the cucumbers, if we don't set down and say, we're going to do it now, you won't have any cucumbers. Same way with missions. And they said, we've just got to be organized with it. And this is what they did. This is straight from the Midnight Encyclopedia. It says, quote, an organized effort. They sent brethren every year to lands near and far, according to the commands of Christ and the practice of the Apostle, to teach and to preach and together for the Lord God's people. In order to able to fulfill this task laid upon them by the Lord, the congregation semi-annually, that means twice a year, usually in the spring and the fall, chose from the preachers a number of brethren to perform a widespread missionary service in all directions, to preach the gospel in accordance with the commandments of Christ. In these early days of terrible persecution, they usually brought these converts back to Moravia with them. Each missionary had a field assigned to them. Thus, brethren went out to all parts of Germany, Moravia, Wurttemberg, Hesse, Thuringia, Rhineland, Sicily, Prussia, to Switzerland, to Poland, in two cases to Venice, Italy. A few came to Denmark and to Switzerland, sending out these missionaries into all different places. Quoting from now Peter Ridderman, the son does what he sees the father doing. When the son wished to create a new humanity, there's the phrase, or to renew humanity in the likeness of the creator, he also wanted to do everything in the proper order. Since they cannot preach without first being sent, it is certain that God, in giving them this command to go out, put his word in the messenger's mouth. The Lord himself testifies to this when he says, I have put my words in your mouth. I have sent you over nations and kingdoms to uproot, to pull down, to destroy, and then to build and plant anew. Therefore, all who have not been sent have no words from God. They have only what they have stolen from the scripture or from one another. That is the main reason God's commission is necessary. It's not enough that they were sent. They also had to know the purpose of being sent and what they had to do. Christ commanded them to do his work, saying, teach all nations and preach the gospel to every creature. From the statement of faith, 186 to 187. When I, soon as I moved into Minnesota, I really wanted to make it out to see the ancient chronicles, the handwritten copy at Bonham. So I went out there, and then the elder there pulled out this. It's still in the original box. A history buff like me, you really love all that, you know, old wooden box from under his bed, you know, and all this. And so he pulled it out, and one of the things that I wanted to see, if you look at the martyrs, if you look at the chronicles, there's a table in there of martyrs. I really wanted to see that in the original. There's a powerful page in the chronicles where it gives the martyrs and how many in each city and that kind of thing. So I asked for it, and I found it on a martyr's table. He allowed me to go through it. And I looked at it, and this is what I saw. So here you see, like, in this city, there was 23 that were martyred, in this city, two, in this city, six, in this city, three. These are all different. In this city, 30. In this city, 10. All these were missionaries being sent out and being killed. And I wanted to see that. But, you know, as I looked at it, though, I noticed something different. It's different in both the German or the English. How do I know it's different? It's not in our copies? Gaps. Gaps. Why would you have gaps? And I turned the page, and the whole page is in gaps, all made out, ready to go. I said, wait a minute, it looks kind of like the baptism and marriage thing you have at the front of your Bible. I said, wait a minute. Speaking to the elder there, I said, the guys who wrote this martyr table left blanks for the next generation. And... They were blaming for it. Yeah, to add names, to add different martyrs that are there. And so this was the mindset of those who wrote the chronicles. We're going to die. You better leave gaps so that in this martyrs table, future martyrs will be written in. It's incredible. It's incredible. So now what do you do? You quit? With all those martyrs? How do you come up with that? Here I am in... Valkylaver. Valkylaver. Valkylaver, an old Hutterite community there. Slovakia. What's that? Slovakia. And Slovakia. And see these different things of how these were lived out. And this area truly became a mission machine. Okay, so now we're into the golden era. It's about 1540, a little further on. And now what's the chance of survival during these ages for like the next hundred years? Robert Friedman says, still 80% death rate. 80% death rate of a Hutterite missionary. That's straight from Robert Friedman. And it's going up. All the early Anabaptists took part in missionaries in some way. This is common. You've heard Ben Ossian's quote. But when I read about the dedication, the tenacity, the untiring zeal, and particularly the organized, systematic approach, it's what caused me to call the Hutterites the Marine Corps of the Anabaptists. The Marine Corps of the Anabaptists. Okay. You know, if you're not scared to die, it's amazing how far you can go. If you have a bunch of soldiers and they're not afraid to die. When Napoleon was trying to take Italy, he was saying, they're going to be easy. And he said, the reason why? Because they're afraid to die. They don't know how to die. But when you are a soldier and you're not afraid to die, you become the Marine Corps of the Reformation. Everything that... All right. This is... This is sort of... Okay, so this... Pause. I'm worried that this is... 110. All right. Okay. All right. A little glitch there. I was probably falling asleep. Okay, so did it work? This is incredible. So here are, during this time of great persecution, 100 communities spread out all over Moravia from... And milled with hundreds of people and each one of them was what happened during this time period. So I asked, when I started to look at this, I said, okay, let's look at some of the techniques. And for us, particularly because a lot of it's either... All of it's in our chronicles or our statement of faith. Let's see how we used to do it. All right. Let's see. All right. Distinctive ones. They had certain distinctives that these mission machines had going for them. First of all, they had a settled belief that all the commands and teachings of Christ are true and for us today. Do we have that... Do we have that commitment? So what if Jesus really meant every word he said? Okay. So in other words, when you go to the Sermon on the Mount, you know, he said... Seven times he said, I know it has been said, anger was taken to name calling. Adultery we look at even to the point of lust. Marriage is permanent. Revenge is put away. Coveting is not allowed. Non-resistance is there. So these things were a settled conviction to them. And so this concept of being what is to become, living out that kingdom on the earth was so much a part of that. And a lot of people say, well Dean, there are many times when things in the kingdom sound like there are still things to come. And that is true. There is a settled response of actually having the presence of the kingdom now but waiting for its final fulfillment in the age to come, the end of the age. Alright. And again, I quoted this earlier. In the beginning, the kingdom was a garden. In the future, it will be from the rising of the sun to what is going down. For now, it's the church. We want us to become. Okay. So if we believe that about Jesus, or they did, so go would mean, go. Alright. So it's that easy stuff again. So go means go. And that was a settled, so when you read these quotes, they went because of the commands of Christ. The second thing was a dedicated ministry. This is powerful. And in here, I would love to see this revived. Okay. A dedicated ministry. Quoting from Ephesians 4, Peter Ritman writes, And he gave some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God and to the perfect man and to the measure of the statue of the cross. Ephesians. Now look what Peter Ritman says. I guess I was getting tired on this. Peter Ritman then, in this, I got to read this straight from him. Looking for the differences of awesome. Okay. On page 113. In the church, Paul says, God has first appointed apostles. These are the ones who are sent out by God and his church in accordance with the command of the gospel to go throughout the country and to establish the obedience of faith for his namesake. This they do by teaching and baptizing. Second, there are bishops and shepherds who have the same office and teaching and baptizing as apostles, except they remain in one place and have care for the church of Christ. And then it talks about different helpers. So here's the different thing. Peter Ritman, in accordance with the scripture, realizes that different people have different callings. So brother, you who are bishops of your congregations. Okay. Okay. Okay. So you have been given a calling of the purity of your flock. You've been given that calling. You'll get that anointing. You'll get that job. And when you give a man a job to do, that's what he intends to do. But then they said, in balance to that, what the early Hutterites had, according to our statement of faith, is they also had apostles. So their vision was to go out and to evangelize and to bring into. Now this probably had a little bit of conflict. The bishop's gonna say, excuse me, you're bringing people into, it's affecting the holiness of our group. That's a problem. The apostle says, well excuse me, we're commanded to go, so what good does it do? And Peter Ritman saw that that tension was something beautiful. Evangelists just keep saying, let's keep bringing people in, it doesn't matter what it does in the congregation. The bishop says, excuse me, we need to hold on. And that balance was something remarkable. And I have not seen any other group in church history that worked it out like this and spelled it out so clearly as a statement of faith. These balanced one another in our different callings, and I think it was part of their success of the early days. A dedicated caller. You know, you just give a man, the apostle Ritman is so big into the inner life. And he said this, as the Father has sent me, so I send you. Here we learn two things, namely how Christ's messenger 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 should be blameless and enter into the work 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. If anyone is to go out for the Lord, Peter Ritman writes, he must be chosen by the Lord and endowed with his power. Listen, Peter Ritman is so much into this. He must feel that power working in him. Above all, he must let the Lord's power rule over him and lead him. Christ will not permit a messenger to go out who is not first clothed with the power of the Spirit. Those who feel this power will heed the command of their Lord who has sent them. Wow. That's the best personal ministry calling I've ever seen in a missionary calling. That's powerful. That's what these brothers have. How about some examples from the Chronicles? Let me give you a few. These were just average brothers. This is straight from the Chronicles. Another servant of the Church of God, George Foster, was sent by the Church to Potsdal in Austria because of the fervent longing in a number of people. He did not know the alphabet, but he preached the gospel with power. Even though he had just returned from prison near Vienna, he set joyfully out the Lord's Word, gathered the believers, and established a church community in accordance with God's command. A dedicated area. There are several other examples, too, of those like that. A dedicated area. To build up the house of God with His chosen, God gave His servants the courage and eagerness to send brothers into various directions. A burning zeal for the truth was now kindled among people through the witness given who bore the cross of a sign of victory of their blood-stained banner. Straight from the Chronicles there. And this year in 1540, the Assembly of the Lord sent brothers out as mission journeys. Leonard Zantacil was sent to Tyrol. Christoph Gaschel to Syria and Carthaglia and Peter Rudimant to Hesse. Hans Goethe was sent to the lower Serbia, to Württemberg. From all these places God lent many of His people to His church was spread widely through Moravia. Klaus Fildinger, a Hutterite evangelist of Moravia, wrote in 1560, quote, so he was caught and the reformers asked him this question, Some ask us why you come into the country of the Duke of Moravia to dissuade the people from Him. And I answered, We go not only into this land, but into all lands, as far as our language extends. For wherever God opens a door unto us, shows us zealous hearts who diligently seek after Him, have a dislike of ungodly life of the world, and desire to do right, to all such places we aim to go. And for this we have scriptural ground. Wow. Hans Karl, while traveling for God's cause when he was captured, when questioned about the mission, he said, quote, We are not sent out to harm anyone. Our mission is the salvation of men, to call them to repent and change their lives. Dedicated to Hans. The early Hutterites sent brethren into the lands near and far according to the commandments of Christ and the practice of the apostles to teach and preach and to gather for the Lord God's people. And in order to fulfill the task laid upon them, I read this, they did this semi-annually. Here's a close-up of that map. So, you know, if something works, it's worth trying. I mean, think in agriculture or think in our businesses, if it works, it works, and this was powerful. And especially when you consider the persecution, this is from 1530 to 1622, this is what happened. Now, here's one that really convicted me. As I'm reading through the Hutterite chronicles, and I get the persecution of the Turks. First, the Turks just incredibly persecuted the Hutterite community. It's so bad. If you read on here, I have several pages here where I said, be careful, this is a very graphic page. It's very bad. The details up here are very graphic, exclamation point. The details of the persecution are just incredible. And then this to this. And then it went right into the Thirty Year Wars. I came to this Thirty Year War, I came to this quote. 1620. This year too, in other words, like we always have, we followed the example of our forefathers. Just remember the name of this conference is Markstein. We have followed the example of our forefathers by sending out several brothers to various places in Germany. They went to seek those on fire for the truth and to call people to repentance. It amazed many people in Bohemia who were both hostile armies, the Protestants and the Catholics, were camped, as well as in Germany that our defenseless members set out during such a time of such terrible danger when scarcely anyone, whether of high or low estate, could travel in security. But the Lord was their protector and they relied on Him alone. When their task was completed through the intercession of His people, He led them all again. Why? Because of this subtle conviction, because we followed the example of our forefathers. Do not remember the ancient landmark which our forefathers had. It's incredible. My favorite quote in Hutterite's history. School teacher, you all know The Long German Prayer. The Long German Meal Prayer. Written by Hans Kral, a school teacher. School teacher, who's here a school teacher? Raise your hand if you're a school teacher. Okay, oh that's a German school teacher. But in his off time, he was on fire for God. He was a missionary and every time he had a chance, this book here, excellent book, must read from all of you. Talks about some of his mission activities. He was captured. And when he was captured, he wrote a letter back to the Hutterite colony. I'm almost done. Listen to his letter and let it burn today. He says, Many in our time think the opposition has ended. They look back and think the war is over. But they don't see it. If they would live the life, they would get persecuted again. 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 and rants as he rages. 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 table stands ready and the guests have begun to arrive. Wow. Wow. What do you get if you get a letter like that from your missionary in prison? Wow. For the dedicated commissioning service. This is the last thing. Is that they had a formal service that they would dedicate and we're going to sing this dedicated commissioning service. The candidates of the congregation told the congregation how God had called them into the mission work as would have been mentioned that we need at first that person feels that personal calling. And the preaching of the gospel in other lands. This was followed by sessions of admonitions in which the missionaries asked the congregation to remain faithful to their local task of visiting the sick and in prison providing for the poor the unemployment and remembering them the missionaries with prayers and material measures. Then the people in the congregation pledged their supports wished them well and prayed for God's mercies upon their ministry. Then they would sing this song. Now founded by a scholar I brought it. So let's all stand up and we're going to sing this song. Let's stand. This is from Lost. Lost. We're going to sing it to the churches. One foundation. Okay. So Lost in the translations and the time. Being inspired. Is it hurting to stand? No, it's good. So we're going to sing this song and think how many hundreds of years it went singing, or a hundred years it went singing sending out missionaries to the ends of the earth and the words of this song are on the top. Here we go. As God his son was sending him to the world of sin. That's a little too high. As God his son was sending him to this world of sin. His son is now commanding that we this world should win. He sends us and commission to preach the gospel clear. To call upon all nations to listen and to hear. To thee, oh God, we're praying. We're bent to do thy will. Thy work we are obeying. Thy glory we fulfill. All people we are telling to mend their sinful way. That they might cease rebelling. Lest judgment be their pain. Two more verses. And if thy Lord desire and should it be thy will that we take sword and fire by those who thus would kill. Then come for pray our loved ones and tell them we've endured and we shall see them yonder eternally secure. Last verse, sing it out. Thy word does teach us and we do understand. Thy promises are with us until the very end. Thou hast prepared the haven. Praise be thy holy name. We love thee, God of heaven. Through Christ our Lord, amen. Wow, amen. Okay, it's our turn now. Let's close with a word of prayer. So, you can turn the lights on. I'm gonna just say a few closing words and then we'll close with a word of prayer. Here's the point. The name of this was Marchtime. Do not remediate the ancient landmarks that our forefathers has. I believe that there's some incredible testimony that God is the God of the living. When Jesus was asked about the people who had gone on to die and he rebuked them and said God is the God of the living. Abraham is alive, Isaac is alive. Likewise, these brothers are alive and they're part of our church. And as they go before us to ask us to come forward and all these things we've talked about today, do you see how they tie together? And what was the one thing entirely they pointed to? Jesus. Christ. Totally Christ. Christ that my life is done. I'm sick of my sin. I'm sick of my own life and I'm gonna give up my sins and accept the shed blood of Jesus Christ and God's gonna come. But not just in the faith. How did they talk about it? Inside me. It's a reality and the fruits follow and we live that out in all the commands of Christ. With that he gives us a kingdom and that kingdom is something that he spreads and he wants to see the whole world what it looks like to follow Christ. And then with that burden to bring glory to God, they shed that through everywhere. And so I'm inspired by that. I wanna see it in my day. I hope to see it. And I wanna encourage the next generation and I wanna encourage us all to totally focus on Christ and dream with me. What if Jesus really did it and everyone would see it? Let's pray. Dearly father, I thank you so much for your son. I thank you for the shed blood of Jesus Christ. I thank you for your plan for humanity. I thank you for a new humanity. And Lord, I ask you just to fill us with your spirit. Let your words enter our heart and let us experience that reality that we read about today. That reality of having Christ with us. The hope of glory. So I thank you for such a well-attended group. We've shared so much. I pray your blessings upon everybody and as they travel, that you would give them traveling mercies and everyone. And Lord, do this in our day, we pray. It's in Jesus' name. Brother Bob Dean, I thank you for your time. It was good. Y'all are a great group. I do wanna say thank you to the congregation. I've read about people in Russia when they had meetings, they would just be able to stand and sit and listen to the missionaries when they came in. They would just sit for hours. You guys did no kidding. You did well. So I appreciate all of you and I thank you for coming and maybe we'll do it again. Maybe we'll stand on missionaries. But I did have a question. How did they know who was zealous? Who wanted them? Do you think these people wrote to them? Oh, yes, you're right. They had letters. They would send out people to different things. You'd hear, oh, there's a group over here and they heard about us and they were writing letters or sending people there. And then just to respond to that. You go to those whose hearts were on fire. So what about the other Anabaptists, like the Mennonites and the Amish? Thank you. It's a good point. The other Mennonites and Amish, we always came around about 150 years later. They weren't around until the 1700s, early 1700s. But the Mennonites certainly were active in missions. We just, no one took records like the Hutterites. And so I asked the Mennonite historian down in Goshen. I'm sorry. Leonard Ross. No, Leonard Ross. John Roth. John E. Roth. And asked him about this gap with understanding Swiss brother missions and we know it happened because people kept coming and converting but they just didn't keep records like this. And so the example that we have of early Anabaptist missions, the only one thing we really have is from the Hutterites. And so... Brother Dean, can you give us a practical example of an Anabaptist service of asking...