The Anabaptists：Neither Catholic or Protestant

Let's pray. Lord, we come to you in the name of Jesus. And we thank you, Lord, for speaking to us already this morning.

Thank you for telling us that we're supposed to love our enemies. And, Lord, when things come, persecution and whatever, we just pray that you'd help us to love those who oppose us. And, Lord, we're not sure all the details of the situation we just heard about.

There's Daryl, Sensening, and family, and, Lord, their son, and just all of that, Lord. We're just, we don't know. We don't know very much at all.

And we're confident that you know everything. You know more than any, you know both sides. You know every person that's involved.

We just pray that you'd undertake and you'd bring grace and peace and redemption through this whole situation. And, Lord, we also pray for our service this morning. I pray for my brother Jeremy as he shares.

I pray that he would share the things that are on your heart. That we could learn the things that are on your heart. Help us to have open ears.

Help us to listen closely and apply it to our heart. Lord, guide us through this week. Protect us from the enemy.

We just pray that you would forgive us our sins as we forgive those that have sinned against us. We just commit ourselves to you in Jesus' name. Amen.

You may be seated. God bless you. Thank you.

Well, good morning. Good morning. Greetings in the name of Jesus.

And grace and peace be multiplied to each one this morning. I'd like to start off with a story here. The title is On Thin Ice.

The small thin man ran with fear of death powering his legs. He had just escaped from the awfulness of the small windowless cell and the impending death by the hooded executioner. His only crime was his own conscience and the anguish of faith that had led him to the small gathering of baptism-minded believers.

Where he finally found a home for his soul. This group practiced the love and acceptance that allowed the man to bring his wife and children to the meetings. Suddenly, the way was much clearer.

But then came the arrest. History had not left record of what the crime was. Suffice to say, it involved matters of faith and the following of King Jesus.

This approach to faith offended the nobility, the church in which the man grew up. In 1569, he was arrested and imprisoned in his home village of Aspirin, about 40 miles south of Amsterdam. Now the man, Dirk Willems, had managed to escape the impending doom of execution, was fleeing to where his wife and children were hiding.

Somehow, in his escape, he was seen by Tofenjager, that means Anabaptist bounty hunters, and pursued. Rather than leading his pursuers to his family, Dirk fled across the open countryside. He was a small man to begin with and had suffered much anguish, both physical and emotional, while in prison, which only fueled him in his escape.

In addition, the ever impending fear of the executioner gave flight to his feet. He arrived at a river that he saw had precautiously thin ice, but which, as he ventured onto it, held under his weight. Treading lightly, he made it across the treacherous expanse and onto solid shore.

He finally had some space between himself and his fears. The Tofenjager, however, were heavier with the weight of responsibility and the good life they were able to live. As they arrived at the riverbank, one of the more daring men followed Dirk out onto the ice.

As loud as a shot, the ice cracked and broke, and the stout, well-dressed hunter plunged into the cold water. As he sank, he cried out in fear. Hearing his pleas for help, Dirk turned back and, once again, venturing onto the slippery surface, helped his pursuer to the safety of the shore.

Sincerely grateful, the Tofenjager wanted to allow Dirk his freedom, but his companions convinced him otherwise. So now this manhunter, whose life and decisions were based on fear, had to fear his own fate as he faced this dilemma. Unfortunately, he, like so many others, decided that the life of the man he was pursuing was not worth the giving up of his own.

The Tofenjager restrained Dirk until soldiers arrived and he was arrested, chained and returned to a more secure cell in the church bell tower. A few short weeks later, on May 16th, 1569, Dirk was condemned to death and burned at the stake. What went through his mind as he sat in his cold, dank cell? Did he question what could have been if he had not turned back to assist? Surely he worried about his wife and his family and their empty future without a provider and a leader.

The story of Dirk Willem lives on in such a way that forces us to ask, what did Dirk have that gave him the strength to return across that thin ice and give his life for his enemy? To answer that question, we turn not to that time, but rather to the church in its infancy and their perception of the God of history. We must consider God's love for his people and his involvement in history that led Dirk to being willing to give his life for another person. A while back, Brother Bob asked me if I'd preach a message about standards, about brotherly agreements, why do we even do such a thing? And I, for weeks, listened to sermons and studied and tried to get something together.

And as I did that, my heart more and more turned to why are we even Anabaptists? It turned more to what do the Anabaptist people stand for and why do they stand for it? You know, why am I not a Catholic this morning? Why aren't we sitting in some Catholic parish having mass? You know, if you were to meet a Catholic, he would tell you that they have true apostolic succession, that from Peter all the way till now, they can trace all the different priests and popes that were ordained. And so they have the authority. We don't have the authority.

We're just a bunch of resisting Protestants out here. As I read one writer write, we're a bunch of little popes to ourselves. So why aren't we in the Catholic Church today? Good question.

I remember one time somebody gave me a book, it was from an Orthodox guy, and he was trying to convince why we should be Orthodox. Why aren't we Orthodox? They have some of the same arguments. They're the one true church.

Why aren't we with them? Or maybe we'd ask, well, why aren't we Lutheran? You know, Luther came out of the Catholic Church and he reformed the church to what he thought would be the best. He preached saved by grace. He preached soul of scripture.

Why aren't we Lutherans this morning? Or maybe why aren't we of the reformed theology, Calvin and Zwingli, Presbyterians? Or maybe we'd ask, why aren't we Baptist? I mean, I was raised Baptist. They're really good at evangelizing. They're really good at studying the Bible.

They're really good at knowing their Bible really, really well. Why aren't we in a Baptist church this morning? Or maybe somebody you meet would say, well, why aren't we in the holiness group of churches? You know, John Wesley, he found this new idea, the second work of grace. And this second work would cause us to, if we had this experience, would be free from all sin.

Like, that sounds pretty good. Originally it was the Methodist church and then the Nazarenes came out of them and the Wesleyans. Why aren't we in a holiness church this morning? Or maybe we'd wonder why we aren't Pentecostal or charismatic.

You know, some of those focus on the gifts of the Spirit, healing, speaking in tongues, prophecy. Why aren't we in a charismatic or a Pentecostal church this morning? Maybe you don't know the answer. The title of the sermon is, The Anabaptist, Neither Catholic or Protestant.

I stole that from a book I saw. I thought it was a great title. Written back in the 70s.

But the Anabaptist, neither Catholic nor Protestant. Now many people, when they think of Christianity, they think there's only two types of Christians. There's the Catholics and there's the Protestants.

Protestant was originally used about a group of German princes. And as they would be in charge, different lords were in charge of their areas, their cantons. They're like, maybe like a county or a state you might think of.

They would get fed up with the Catholic Church and they would protest the Catholic Church. They actually came together and protested the Catholic Church. And then at some point they would side with the Reformed Church, with the Reformed theology.

And so they began to be known, these lords, these nobles, as protestors. They were Protestants. But my question for you this morning, are you an Anabaptist because you have chosen this? Because you feel it's the best way to follow Christ? Good question to ask.

Or maybe you were just born into it. And maybe you even sit here this morning and doubt, is it really the best thing to be Anabaptist? Maybe some other groups tantalize you and make you wonder. Maybe that would be a better place to be.

Who were they? Who were the Anabaptists? What did they believe? What distinguished them from the Catholics and the Protestants? What was their passion? What was their vision? What was their goals? I hope everyone in the back is listening. I hope you all will hear these important things about the Anabaptists. Listen to this article.

It says... Actually, let me back up. The name Anabaptist was given by their opponents, Re-baptizers. That means to... They were... Ana in Greek means re.

And so that means they were given this name by their opponents. And... They didn't even actually want this name. In fact, they prefer the name Baptist.

They prefer the name Baptizers. They were called that in German and in Dutch. But it meant Re-baptizers.

They didn't like the term because in their minds, they weren't Re-baptizers. They were baptized correctly the first time. Here's this article.

It says... These Anabaptists were the most hated, persecuted, and harassed sect of the 16th century. They were condemned everywhere, always and by all. They were banished, imprisoned, executed, burned at the stake and drowned, and yet they survived.

They were a real nuisance to the authorities. You know, they were convinced by the early reformers, Luther and Zwingli. They studied under them, but this is what their deal.

They felt that Luther and Zwingli had stopped short. They hadn't gone far enough. They retained too much of the old church, the old Catholic church.

But Luther and Zwingli, some of the reformers, felt they were way too radical, and they were going way too far. Luther had some interesting words for them. He called them corner preachers, rabble-rousers, infiltrators, messengers of the devil.

He labeled them enthusiasts. How would you like to be labeled this morning an enthusiast? Like I said, here, how would you like to be called this morning... Somebody said, are you a doopsgesind? That's the term in Dutch. Doopsgesind.

I asked Titus yesterday, are you a doopsgesind? That means Baptist. That's what they wanted to be called. They wanted to be called Baptists.

Or in German, toffer. Remember I toffened whatever earlier? That was Anabaptist hunters. Here's another quote.

The Anabaptist belief system was not geographically bound to one area, one leader, one culture. Rather, Anabaptists fractured the social and political structure of Europe. And because of that, the followers of the sect were often fugitives moving from place to place.

Now I want to give some credits. It's hard in sermons to always be quoting people. And this person and that person.

So I just thought I'd say it all up front. This book here I've been reading. It's called Cathedrals, Castles, and Caves.

How many of you have been to the Mennonite Amish Heritage Center? Anybody? Raise your hand. What? Ohio. It's got the panorama painting.

Was that a sight to behold? I would love to go there sometime. That sounds really interesting. One painter.

This man, Marcus Yoder, works there. He's the director. And he wrote this.

It's a very good book. It's called Cathedrals, Castles, and Caves. The Origins of the Anabaptist Faith.

And here it says from Christ to 19... I think it's the 69th. And it starts off through... So I will be using some of his quotes through here. And I'm sure this will turn into more than one sermon.

I also want to quote from this book some. The Joy of Submission by Donald Martin. And this one, John Koblitz.

If anyone would follow me. Those are some of the books I'll probably be quoting from. Also from other things I found online.

Also Harold Bender. How many of you ever read The Anabaptist Vision? Okay. You should go read that.

But I'll probably be quoting from some of that. The Anabaptist Vision. But I want to start back a while before The Anabaptist started.

I want to go all the way back and try to bring us up to a place so we can understand why and what the Anabaptists were facing when they came out. When they woke up. When they decided to follow Jesus.

Now Timothy led a song this morning. It said, Who is on the Lord's side? And then it said, Who is willing to leave the world's side? Who will face the foe? And in many ways that's what the Anabaptists had to do. Was leave the world's side.

So let's talk a little. Many of us have read the early church. Many of us have listened to David Brousseau.

Have looked at the early church dictionary. Have heard many teachings on it. But the early church would have been categorized as one that was not involved in politics.

That was pretty universal for the first 300 years. They did not vote. They did not take place in politics as magistrates.

And they were non-resistant. Number two. Actually sub-point of number one.

There was no records. In the first 250 years of the church joining the military. Serving in the government.

They did not allow serving as a magistrate or in the military. Number two. They had a strong love for each other.

And for those around them. And number three. They believed that Christianity was a choice.

Sometimes I think we don't realize how big of a deal that is. But they believed the church was made up of people who chose to die to self and follow Christ. Voluntarily.

And around the year 312. One morning. The emperor Constantine.

He was the emperor of Rome. He was going to go to battle. And he saw a sign.

Above the sun. Up in the sky. He saw a sign.

And this sign. He saw this. Anybody know what that is? Anybody want to take a guess? Hey that's really good.

Thank you. Exactly. So in Greek.

I won't spell it all out. But the first two letters of Jesus name. In Greek.

Christ I think. Starts with an X and a P. But he saw this sign up in the clouds. Above the sun.

And under it. Under these words. Up in the sky.

He saw. In this sign. Conquer.

How do you spell conquer? Like that right? In this sign. Conquer. That night.

Constantine had a dream. In this dream. Jesus showed up and told him to paint this sign.

Onto the shields. Of his warriors. And whenever he went to battle next.

I don't know if it was the next day but. He claimed the victory. And he won the battle and he claimed it was because.

The god of the Christians. Helped him. The god of the christians.

Came and showed up. told him how to conquer. This is a picture of an early Roman coin and you can see that sign the X and the P. Can you see in the back? Legend says, now this is legend it's not for sure history, but legend says that Constantine had his soldiers after this occasion at some point baptized into the Christian religion by having them all go through a river and as they went through the river they kept their hand the one they use for fighting and their sword above the water.

They did that so that this hand could continue using it evil in this kingdom. In the year 312 for the first time ever in the Christian faith an emperor who was supposedly now in favor of Christianity called for a Christian Church Council and presided over it. He sat and he he called the church to come together and he sat there as the official and past that point in time the Roman government began to appoint positions in the church.

They began to give the pastors, the preachers, the priests tax exemption. They actually took from the Roman government taxes to pay for their church houses and the church and state began to become one. The Romans, the world around them that used to persecute the Christians now persecuted non-Christians.

Think about that how much it flipped in about a hundred years. The Christians who are on the run for over 300 years now or under a little under 300 years and were persecuted were now persecuting others who were not Christian. When previously it was the goal to silence the church Rome now sheltered it.

By 380 remember 312 was the Council of Nicaea. By 380 Christianity became the official state religion of the Roman Empire marking the dawn of the first Christian Empire. Now I say that tongue-in-cheek.

I don't really believe there's a such thing as a Christian Empire. Now before the true essence of Christianity was martyrdom was suffering for the first 300 years now the whole world was part of the church. Imagine to this morning if we told everybody in Halsey that they had to come to this church meeting or they would be fine.

They could be in prison. You had to come here. How many people would be sitting here without a choice? How many people would be sitting here begrudgingly doing whatever they were told? The church would be filled with the world.

And so what happened is people started struggling. People started wanting what Jesus taught and they but they didn't know how to have it because the church was full of sin. The Protestants sorry sorry the Catholic Church would say well the wheat and the tares shall stay together.

Later the Anabaptist said yeah that's the world. The field is the world. But see at this point in time the world was infiltrated into the church.

And so what began to happen is people would pull out of the church. They withdraw themselves and they would create community societies of people. What do you think those names would be? What do you think a name of a society of people living together with help that held things in common would be in the Catholic Church? Monastery.

Have you ever heard of a monk? You know they got the little shave spot the top little or the or the nuns. Those were the women's incumbents. They withdrew themselves from society and they pledged their life to the church.

That was their way to get out of the church that was full of the world and somehow be able to follow Jesus with all their heart. What began to happen through these years is a system. How many of you ever heard the word feudal? How is that word used? Somebody give me.

If I said that's just feudal what would you think that means? Okay an impossible attempt. Well I think it's feudal but isn't that maybe I'm wrong. Pointless yeah.

I'm not sure if they came from each other. Maybe they did but the feudal system as far as I understand it spelled as feudal. But I was doing a little research and almost sound like they came from each other.

A feudal system was involved into the into the the way these people thought and there were three groups of people. There were, how did I have it written? There were those who prayed and we called those the clergy. There are those who fought.

We called those the nobles. You ever heard of knights and nobles and lords and earls? And then there were those who labored. What do you think these guys were called? Peasants.

I'm gonna do terrible spelling today. They say in general that about 10% of the population was clergy. About 2 to 3% was the nobles and about 87% were the peasants.

So most likely if you're sitting here this morning you were gonna be a peasant. It was made up of a hierarchical system like this. You had your king and queen.

You had your nobles and clergy. Many times some of the high-ups in clergy in the Roman Catholic Church were also nobles. They were rich people.

And then you had your knights. Any children here? What is a knight? What do you think a knight rides? What do knights ride? They drive cars? What do knights ride? Horses, right? And what do they have on their heads? Helmets. And what do they have that they can take along with them? Swords and long poles, right? And the rest were peasants and serfs.

Anybody know what a serf is? The other word for what? Oh, mm-hmm, okay. There were what are called free peasants. All of these were peasants but some were free peasants and some were serfs.

Serfs were people when they fell on hard times. They couldn't make their due. They couldn't make their taxes.

They sold themselves to the nobility to be taken care of by the nobility. They became servants. But what happened with time was if you were born to a serf's family, then you were a serf.

And they began to lose rights. They had no rights. In fact, they were thought of as bound to the land.

You couldn't leave. This was your job. You worked on this land.

If you were born a serf, you're a serf. That's your job. It was a class.

Some free peasants had land but serfs didn't. About out of the out of this class of people, who wants to guess how many were serfs out of this lower class here? What's the percentage of serfs? Very close, 80%. So guess what? Most of you in this room probably would have been a serf.

Probably would have been bound to the land. Did you know if you wanted to get married, you had to ask? You had to ask those above you. Wow.

And so the way it worked is the king would give large areas of land, a canton, large areas, he would say to his nobles, he would say you're in charge of this large area. Maybe he was called a Earl or a Duke. Then the Duke would have the Knights under him.

The Knights would be his army, his people. He would give portions of that land he was in charge of. And those Knights would control the peasants.

They would make sure they paid their dues. They'd make sure they were working their land right. And the peasants would bring the food back to the Knights and the nobles.

And this was a way that the king could keep control of large areas of land by splitting out authority all through it. In the area of Germany, about the year of 800, a man named Charlemagne was crowned by the Catholic Church to be now the ruler, the king, maybe they would even call it an emperor, of what was now called the Holy Roman Empire. That was different than the original Roman Empire.

You know where that Mediterranean Sea is and the Roman Empire kind of was all around that. In this, it goes up through Italy and up to Germany and through that whole swath of land, Switzerland and Germany and all that even up in the Czech up over there and a little of France over here. That whole area was now called the Holy Roman Empire and this king, Charlemagne, was in charge of it.

And that Empire stayed there until around the year 1806 when Napoleon destroyed it. I'll show you a couple of pictures. It encompassed Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, parts of Italy and Switzerland.

It was a large area. So you can see in this picture, here's Italy down here. France and Spain are down here.

And you can see all these little tiny, tiny dots right all over. This is the Germany in the 1500s. And if you looked over on the side, you would see house of Holzberg and then two lines under it and these colors in yellow.

And then house of Wetland and then two lines, Ernestine and Albertine. What that was, was a Duke who was given by the king that whole area of land and then the lines were the sons that were brothers under him. So they would manage different lines.

And so you can see this whole area all the way up from Germany down to Switzerland. And these areas were managed very differently than we would ever think. By the 1500s, this system of nobility and being serfs and peasants, the system of 10% clergy, 3% and 87% peasants was in place.

And you can imagine what times were like. It was rough. There were diseases going around.

People were dying. The Black Plague came through at one point and killed lots of people. In fact, one of the early Anabaptists were killed, were died by the plague.

People were beginning ready for change. In 1517, Martin Luther went and nailed 95 feces, 95 issues he had with the Catholic Church. He nailed on a church door.

Can you imagine doing that? A Catholic Church door. I mean by this point, the Catholic Church had all power. They were in control of the government.

They were in control of the people. And he goes and has the audacity to nail 95 problems he had with the Catholic Church on the door. He criticized their corruption and their practices.

He argued against their idea of indulgences. Now, indulgences were this idea where they would pay for forgiveness of sins. Could you imagine if I came to you today and said, you can go ahead and sin and you can pay me for forgiveness for that sin and it'll get you out of purgatory.

They believed in an idea that people had to go to a place where they suffered before they could go to heaven. But if you paid the right fee, we could get you out of there. We could get you out of purgatory early.

Is that corruption? And so Luther was tired of it. And so he argued against that. He challenged the church's authority and this sparked what is known today as the Reformation.

Now during this time, listen to this number, only 10% of people knew how to read. You know, I just pulled out these books and I showed you three books. Did you know that most people didn't even have books? How many people like to read? Okay, a lot of hands went up.

Most people didn't even have books. In fact, if you were rich and you had a lot of money, you might have some books. In fact, they said that one of the biggest, largest libraries in Europe had, who wants to guess how many books? 69.

Less. 30. The largest private library in Europe had 30 books.

Because at that time, to print a book, you had to carve out wood and make these letters and they would, or hand copy before that, they would have to hand copy each page. But then they came to the idea with the press where they could carve out each letter on a piece of wood and that one piece of wood would be equivalent to a piece of paper. But in 1519, so 1517 was Martin Luther, he nailed those 95 Theses on the wall.

It sparked the Reformation. But in 1519, two years later, Gutenberg came up with a new idea. It was called the movable type press.

Now there were presses before that, but the movable type press. The idea was this. He would take a piece of metal and he would carve out a letter.

Then he would stamp that into a piece of softer metal like copper. Then he would pour and make a mold for that letter and he can make multiple molds from that letter. The Gutenberg press.

Here's a picture of a representation of what the thing looked like. In this area right here were little pieces of metal that they would line up and make the words and sentences. They would line up for a whole page.

After doing all that, they would take the piece of paper, put it in, bring it over and they would put this press, push down, after they put ink on all those pieces of metal and they would have a page. Can you imagine doing that over and over and over and then the next page? This is what the little movable types look like. Little pieces of metal and on each piece is a letter.

They would line those up one by one by one next to each other. This is what a completed product might look like. A completed page ready to be printed.

They would have all those little letters lined up side by side by side and ready to print. In the Amish Mennonite Amish or Mennonite Amish heritage place, this Bible, maybe you saw it. You saw that one Glenn? Remember it? This Bible sitting in there.

It was printed by one of these presses in Zurich, Switzerland. Can you imagine the amount of work that went through that? But the people were beginning to be able to read things. Distribution was being made.

In just the year 1520 to 1530, over 10,000 unique pamphlets were being mailed around, passed around. Ideas were being disseminated. Then Luther translated the Luther Bible in German.

He was in the early 1500s, 1522, just the New Testament. Then he released the whole Bible by the 1530s. So the people were now being able to read these ideas.

They were reading the Bible and they began to see things that the Catholic Church was teaching them that was wrong. By the year 1530, remember I said 1520 to 1530, they were printing these pamphlets. By the year 1530, ten years after all this was happening, over six million little pamphlets were in circulation, which is a lot for a group of people that never could read things, never had the ability to do all of this, and now all of a sudden this Gutenberg press and concept was all over and it was being done in secret and hidden.

The Bible had been in Latin. Can you imagine this morning if I would have gotten up and been like sola, sola, mula, I can't even do it, but said something in Latin and you all just sat there like I can't wait till this is over. You had no idea what I was saying and I just swung something and did some sacraments and rituals and walked out and you're all happy because another week you've done your sacrament.

That was Christianity for you. That's what Catholicism was up to this point. Now the Bible could be read in German.

That'd be like you only ever hearing the Bible in Latin and all of a sudden you can now read it in English. Up to this point the Catholic Church had been the only interpreter of Scripture. Think about it.

They would tell you what the Bible meant. You couldn't read the Bible and know what it meant yourself because you didn't know Latin, but now Martin Luther translated the Bible into their tongue so they could read it. The people read the Bible and started to interpret themselves and the common man could question now the church because he had the voice of God.

Now has that caused some problems? I would venture to say yes when it's done in his extreme, but in many ways it was a good thing. So to recap where we're at this point. Extreme poverty, the serfs, the peasants, no rights, nobility in the church were powerful and they were heavy-handed and they were corrupt.

This is what they were living in. Number two, a change of the way information was being spread. New ideas and scriptures were being published so the common man could read.

Luther of course could have been kicked out by the Catholic Church, but he wasn't because there was a guy named the wise Frederick. He was protected by Frederick the Wise and they allowed him, he's one of these nobles like I told you, one of these guys, he allowed him to preach in his area the ideas. Even though he himself was Catholic, he allowed Luther to preach his interesting concepts of Christianity.

Concept of that salvation isn't earned by works. Remember the old Asalaam, you know all that Latin stuff and swinging? That's how a Catholic would have thought, by coming and participating in mass. Now mind you, we're preaching right now, you realize this is all non, this doesn't happen in the medieval Catholic Church.

It was the Ola Salaam stuff and the swinging and it was taking communion and then you were saved. That was like part of, you're taking the body of Christ, you do, I think you needed to confess your sins, but that was like what it meant to be a Catholic. The sacraments, you took part in their service, in their sacraments.

Luther was saying no, we're not saved by all of that, we're saved by grace, we're saved by, not by works. That was in the year 15, in the early 1520s. At the same time over in Switzerland, so I don't have the map, but Germany's up here right and Switzerland's down here, if we're looking at a map.

Ulrich Zwingli was another reformer. He was in Switzerland and he began to preach through the New Testament, but he did it in a different way that was not, anybody had heard. He was preaching to it.

I sat there this morning as we did our Bible study, you know, we read the verse and we all talk about it. This was unheard of. Luther got up and he would read and he would give his ideas and then he'd read and he'd give his ideas and then he quit somewhere and come back the next week and he'd read more of the same going on to the next verse, give his interpretations.

This idea of just going through the scripture and giving your thoughts was very, very different. Did I just say Luther? I meant Zwingli. Let me show you a picture here of the Swiss, if I have it here, I think I do, of the Swiss Cantons.

So remember the Lords and the Nobles and the Cantons? This was the Swiss Confederacy. There were 13, I don't know, you might call them states or counties or something like that, but you know, Zurich is way up here, but then you have all these other ones and I won't even begin to try to pronounce them. Basel.

I'll try that one. Luzern. Zug.

But anyway, this is, these were the, these were the Cantons in Switzerland and they were Catholic at that time. All those had nobles and they were Catholic and all of that, but Zwingli started preaching some of the same ideas as Luther, some of the same problems he had with the Catholic Church. And so Zurich, remember that one little area up there called Zurich, they said we'll hear a public disputation.

That was kind of like a public debate or a hearing. So they asked the Catholics to come, they asked Zwingli to come, they all listened to Zwingli and his ideas. And in the end, Zurich, this was a city and was a whole area too, it was a Canton, sided with Zwingli.

They said, you know what, we like your ideas Zwingli, we're not going to go at the Catholic Church anymore. What a huge thing to do. And about half of all of those Cantons in that picture I showed you, all those different 13, half of them sided with Zwingli, with the Reformers, with the idea of Reformation.

The other half stayed Catholic. Problem is, this created tension between Switzerland. Half of them were Catholic, half of them were Protestant.

It came to a point where one time the Catholics killed a Protestant priest and then the Protestants killed a Catholic priest and they were having fighting. And years down the road, I think around maybe 1530 something, there was two wars in Switzerland over this whole thing. Zwingli himself went out to battle with his parishioners and 24, I think it was, of his pastors, they went out on the battlefield because the Catholic Cantons came to attack Zurich and they went out to fight.

And there's still a monument to this day of Zwingli over there in Zurich, I believe, this monument. Zwingli died on the battlefield with his parishioners, with the other 24 pastors, I think they all died. Does anybody notice something about this picture? Two things he's got in his hands.

What does he have? A Bible and a sword. A Bible and a sword. He was a man of God but he still fought.

He fought. And all of this time is how the Anabaptists came out of. So imagine they were poor, the Catholic Church was corrupt, Reformation was taking place, things were being printed, people were being able to read, and Anabaptism began to form.

There was a school at Zwingli's church. It was called the Grossmunster. The church was called the Grossmunster.

Did you go there? You did. Interesting. Did you go to the school? No.

You did. Was it near the church? Interesting. So this Grossmunster had a school in it, a theology school, and Zwingli actually encouraged his followers to read the Bible and to study, have study groups, study together.

What did the Bible mean? And they did that. These followers would study the Bible and as they would study, they would start to see things in the New Testament. And they would start to question, is it right that the church is forced upon people that we make all of Halsey come and be part of the church? And is it right that even from when they're babies we just bring them right in, baptize them, and they're now part of the church? Is that right? And Zwingli actually agreed with them.

This guy with the sword and the Bible, he actually agreed with his, at least to a certain extent, he agreed with his students. Anybody know the students names? One person. Give me a name of a student.

Huh? Knox? No, no, no. That's a different reformer. What's that? Okay.

Yep. Conrad Grebel. George Blarock came later.

Felix Mons. So George Blarock came later. It was first Conrad Grebel and Felix Mons.

They were studying together and they began, they found each other and they said, this is true what we're finding in the Bible that, you know, the church should be voluntary. It should be people made up of people that want to be Christians, that want to live like Christ, not forced upon them. And they felt it should be abolished.

And their day, a baby was born and it was required to be baptized within eight days. And if that baby was baptized, he was now a member of the church, but also the state. It made him, you ever hear of social security numbers? You know what your social security number is? You haven't memorized? In a sense, that's what this was for them.

When you were baptized as a baby, you were entered into a book and you are now tracked. This was the state's way of knowing who was born and how to tax them and how to tithe them. Do you know the tithe was mandatory? The church tithed 10% from you and then the state taxed their taxes, from my understanding.

This practice had been in place for a thousand years since Constantine. So the idea that we don't baptize babies anymore would be like going to the United States of America saying, no more social security numbers. You know, it wasn't just affecting the church.

It was affecting the state. It was affecting the government. So these guys were radical in what they were asking.

But they were seeing that Jesus instituted a voluntary church, not controlled by the government, and that it should not include people who hadn't chose, who hadn't chosen with their own will to follow Christ. Shouldn't Christianity be a choice? In 1523, Conrad and Felix began, they were the students, they began to voice their disappointment, their disagreement with this forced baptism. But now remember Zurich and the map, they were an area, right? And they had a council.

They got together and they talked about what are we gonna do. And they actually had Zwingli and they listened to him and the Catholics and they said they sided with Zwingli. Now they're gonna have the Anabaptists come and talk.

They want to know about these new Anabaptists idea. Are they gonna side with the Anabaptists or are they gonna side with Zwingli? So they have this disputation and Zwingli caved. Remember he originally agreed with his students but he caved because of pressure.

Remember the song said, who will leave the world side? Felix Mons and Conrad Grebel were all out if it meant their death. They will leave the world side. Zwingli on the other hand said, we have to be patient.

Reform can't come that quick. You're too, you're too, you're going too far with this. And he knew if he took away baptism from the city council, it's like taking Social Security numbers away.

It's like taking their ability to track people. It would not go up. It was taking tradition away also.

And so he knew that it would be too much and he would lose the support of the government. So these the students questions that they had was really about the nature and the identity of the church. What should a church be? What brought birth Anabaptism was about the nature and the identity of a church.

What really is to true Christianity and how should a church engage with society? Now why am I even, I'm just gonna take a quick second here. Why am I even talking about this? Because I hope through this we can start to see what is our nature? What are we about? Why, what is important? You know we can tend to come here and just check the box and do our Christianity thing and and and dress up and do all the Sunday stuff. And in many ways we start to become with what the Anabaptists were coming against.

The Protestants would love their theology. They love to explain all the things of God. But then they didn't live it.

They didn't live Christianity. And sometimes we can do the same thing. And what's scary is we claim we're all Anabaptists.

We claim we came from that. But the question is, and my hope and desire is, that as we look at them and what they came out of and what their goals and visions were, we might could take a little more of that on us and start to realize we need to change some places. So as they studied the Scriptures, especially in the New Testament, and keep this, this is very important, they also studied the early church.

They didn't just study the New Testament, but they studied the early church writings. They came up to four things. Number one, well let's do this.

What do you think's one of them? What would you say four things that these students would have seen if you were to put in your own words? Baptism? Okay, yeah. Baptism should follow belief. Can babies believe? No, babies can't believe.

So baptism means to follow belief. What else? So I'll go with the second one. Separation of church and state.

But non-resistance up to this point had not been totally ironed out. There were still Anabaptists in this group that were resistant, believed in using the sword, and we'll talk about that maybe in another sermon, but up to this point it was kind of a mixed bag. But they did believe there needed to be a level of choice.

The government should not be involved in the church. So I'll go with that one. What else do you think that they were seeing? Okay, it's a good idea.

I would guess they wrote some on that, but that was, I wouldn't say that was their main focus. That would've been Luther's, that have been Calvin's, that have been Zwingli's. Church membership should be voluntary.

That's kind of tied to baptism. And discipleship and obedience to Christ should be the core of the Christian life. They were tired of looking at Catholics and Protestants who said they lived like Jesus but didn't.

Had all these great things to say but didn't. This is why they were not Catholic and they weren't Protestant. Catholics and Protestants enforced church membership.

The Catholics, like I said, were the sacraments. The Protestants were theology. And that scares me sometimes as I think about it.

How easy is it for us to turn it into theology? Is Christianity, is what the purpose we come together on Sunday morning so we can figure out better theology? Or is it to figure out how we can be disciples of Christ? That's what they saw a problem with. I want to read you a couple of quotes. We're almost through and then we'll pick this up, I think, next week.

In describing what Anabaptist believed as a critique, Henry Bullinger, now this is Zwingli's successor. So he's like the under guy, he's the next guy after Zwingli. He said this.

This is what he said about the Anabaptists. Okay, so he's the enemy. He doesn't like the Anabaptists.

He said, this is what they teach. One cannot and should not use force to compel on anyone to accept the faith, for faith is a free gift of God. It is wrong to compel anyone by force or coercion to embrace the faith or to put to death anyone for the sake of his erring faith.

Remember the Catholic churches would put you to death if you erred from the faith. If you decided you were no longer wanting to be Catholic, they put many Anabaptists to death for that very thing. I met a Catholic at this thing we were at yesterday and we started talking.

I just looked at him and said, your people killed our people. He's like, I know and that was not right, but um, because he was asking about Mennonites and stuff. It is an error that the church and the sword, other than the that of the divine word, should be used.

The secular kingdom should be separated from the church and no secular ruler should exercise authority in the church. The Lord is commanded simply to preach the gospel, not to compel anyone by force to accept it. The true church of Christ has the characteristic that it suffers and endures persecution, but does not inflict persecution upon anyone.

Now we'd all say, amen, that sounds good, right? That was a critique. Bollinger thought it was not very good. Here's another early Anabaptist reader.

This is what he said. So this early Anabaptist reader, sorry, leader, was talking about Luther and Zwingli. He said, while in the national church, he's talking about the state church, like the whole area was Lutheran, the whole area was Calvin or Zwingli.

While in the national church, we obtained much instruction from the writings of Lutherans, Zwingli, and others concerning the mass and other papal ceremonies, that they are vain or empty. Yet we recognize a great lack as regard repentance, conversion, and true Christian life. So he was saying, they talk a lot about all this great stuff, but in day-to-day life, they don't really walk repentance and true Christian, true Christian life.

Upon these things my mind was bent. I waited and hoped for a year or two, since the minister had much to say of amendment alight. He stayed in the church and said, please, you have so much to say about walking with Jesus and knowing Jesus.

Of giving to the poor, loving one another, and abstaining from evil. But I could not close my eyes to the fact that the doctrine which was preached and which was based on the Word of God was not carried out. Saying, they didn't live like it Monday through Saturday.

They talked a lot about it, but they didn't live like it. No beginning was made towards true Christian living, and there is no unison of the teaching concerning the things that were necessary. In other words, people didn't start living like true Christians, and their teaching wasn't unified.

It didn't come together and bring the point of the gospel. And although the mass and the images were finally abolished, true repentance and Christian love were never in evidence. Changes were made only as concerned external things.

All they cared about is external things. They didn't care about loving Jesus and loving the brotherhood with all their heart. This gave me occasion to inquire further into these matters.

Then God sent his messengers, Conrad Grebel and others, whom I confirmed about the fundamental teachings of the Apostles and the Christ life and practice. I found them men who surrendered themselves to the doctrine of Christ. This word in German, Bußfertigkeit.

Anybody want to try to pronounce that for me? Bußfertigkeit. And it means repentance evidenced by fruit in your life. With new assistance, we established a congregation in which repentance was evidenced by newness of life in Christ.

I'm gonna stop there. I hope to continue on Lord willing next week and continue on in the journey. Who were the Anabaptists? What did they believe? But as we see this morning, just to wrap it up, they had a strong fervor to know Jesus, to walk with him, to be to disciple, be a follower of him, to mimic his life while on earth.

And they saw a failure in both the Catholics and in the Protestants. The Catholics focuses on the sacraments. The Protestants focus on theology.

But they didn't see it walking out in daily life. They didn't see true Christian love. They didn't see amendment of life.

It's one thing to repent, but it's another thing that your whole life changes. Amendment of life. They wanted a true church that was pure, spotless, that was voluntary.

And they began to establish it. Within several years, these men died for the faith. There was a martyred synod where 60 of them came together.

And as they left, many of them died. That's why it was called the martyr synod. As they left from that gathering of pastors and went home, they died.

The average lifespan of an Anabaptist preacher after he ordained was two years. Two years. So these were radical men.

And my goal, my heart, is that we will see the true heart behind Anabaptism. And it wouldn't just be some religion, some denomination, something we just do and check the box. So God bless each one of you as we endeavor to seek Him.