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Well, good morning. It's nice to be back. I was watching last week online, and I think y'all apparently really enjoyed Jeff DeFu doing his discussion of baptism and the Lord's Supper. In fact, I know some of y'all are really getting into it. You couldn't quite cover them both.

Maybe we'll get him back up here doing something like that again. Today we're beginning to start working with some individuals within the Anabaptist movement. If we can get our PowerPoints going, and hopefully they're going to be popping up there. Let's just say as a very short overview, the Anabaptist movement, as there's increasingly more and more scholarship about the movement, and some scholars are now thinking that possibly you have more people persecuted and killed in the repression of the Anabaptists than what you had with the ancient Roman Empire and the beginnings of Christianity itself.

And I'll show you a few things today. I might just warn parents, there are a few slides. They're just old wood cuts of some of the persecutions that were being done, and some of them are pretty gruesome. You might just be worried. That for children, even though they're just black and white wood prints.

But that is coming up. Today, we're going to talk primarily about just one of the Anabaptists. Unlike the Reformation, you know, you basically have Luther and Zwingli and John Calvin. And of course, Zwingli is going to be killed in a battle. Both Luther and Zwingli get to live out their entire lives, normal life spans.

But with the Anabaptists, the average lifespan of an Anabaptist leader was about two years. And therefore, there's a host of them, and we can't cover them all. But I thought this person is someone who deserved a little more attention, and that is Michael Sadler. You can just anglicize him, Michael Sadler, if you want to.

Mikael Sadler is a very interesting Anabaptist person, and I think his life is just extraordinarily convicting. And it saddens me today knowing the richness of our Baptist heritage that we now have increasingly Baptist churches taking the name Baptist out of their name. I think that is due to the fact of incredible ignorance of the Baptist heritage that we have, and the many, many lives that were given to serve the Lord.

I think if they knew that, they would be ashamed of themselves for doing that. But let's start today with Michael Sadler. And would you please read that verse? I think it epitomizes his life, one of y'all, if you could. Is Mike on? Yeah. For God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power, of love, and a sound mind.

2 Timothy 1:7. All right. Mikael Sadler was born in Stauffen, near Freiburg, Germany. We don't know his exact date of birth. We know it's in the 1490s. He was a monk, sort of like Martin Luther, at a very early age. And he becomes a prior at a Benedictine monastery of St.

Peter's, which is near Freiburg. And if you, I'm not working. Let's see. I'm on. I wonder if there's a battery in here. Okay, could somebody just switch the picture of the church there at Freiburg today? And he was very well educated. By the way, the Benedict monastery, he rises up to position number two in charge.

Which means he's the guy that did all the grunt work. He was basically the one running the monastery there, which is a very large monastery. He is well educated. We know they knew Greek, Hebrew, and Latin. And by all accounts, he was just an incredible scholar. In May of 1525, you have the peasants' rebellion that's spreading all across Germany arrive there at the monastery.

Peasants march in, take over the monastery. The monastery had these vast lands, and they're protesting what was, in effect, over-taxation by the monastery of the peasants. And then here comes the military, the imperial troops arrive, and they then come in and take over the monastery. Now, sometime during all this chaos, Stadler leaves the monastery.

But it wasn't just because of what was going on with all this chaos. He was undergoing a personal, both intellectual and spiritual crisis. Sadler, of course, there's a quote by Abraham Lincoln, something along the lines that once a man discovers a truth, he must follow that truth or become a liar.

And Stadler had begun intensive study of the actual scriptures. And one of the things I've noticed in my going over a lot of these materials is how many of these reformers that become reformer leaders were either monks or priests. Priests, almost all of them. And the thing that's so amazing is many of them will testify that they spent their early life studying for the priesthood, but they didn't know anything about Scripture.

They never even read the scripture, and yet they could become functioning priests with virtually no knowledge of the scripture. In fact, hopefully, we'll be able to cover a hubmeier next time. And that was his story, you know, got his PhD and hadn't even read the Bible. But anyway, Michael Stadler, he had begun reading some of these Reformation tracts by Luther.

It really got him to wondering about things. And so he began studying, especially Paul's epistles. That's going to get you, if you study Paul's epistles. And he was trying to figure out what the truth was. And during this period, he comes to repentance. He accepts Christ. And he, of course, is very disappointed with monasticism, much like what Luther went through and the Catholic Church.

And so he left the monastery. The story is said that he barely had clothes on his back. He just leaves everything. Now, you've got to remember, as number two of a Benedictine monastery, the Benedictines lived very, very well. He was considered upper middle class in terms of lifestyle.

He had a very, very good lifestyle, materially speaking. Number two man there. He leaves all of that. In fact, it said someone gave him the clothes that he uses to leave the monastery. So he goes about traveling, seeking what was the correct Christian life to live. And he winds up in Zurich.

If you will recall, last time I was teaching, we talked about these three individuals, Conrad Grebel, Felix Mons, George Bailock. These were, of course, the disciples of Zwingli, who are going to learn and become very reformed. And then they go further. And they become very upset with Zwingli when he pulls back from doing away with infant baptism, which, according to Scripture, they realize was not scriptural.

And of course, they have this big disputation. And in that big disputation, the city council, of course, does not want to do away with infant baptism. And Zwingli, probably fearful that he needs to keep with the government, goes along with the city council's decision. And so they break with Zwingli.

And then that's going to lead to this third disputation where Zwingli is going to defend basically the Town government's position, and they decide that they're going to break and go a different way. Ultimately, of course, we have the martyrdom of all three of these individuals. Well, you have sitting there at that disputation Mikhail Sadler.

He's there observing this. Actually, there's several famous later Anabaptist leaders from all parts of Europe sitting at this disputation. They're going to agree with these guys. Also, sitting there is Wilhelm Rublin, who actually had led the Reformation and burned Switzerland. And some think that he was preaching against infant baptism even before these three here.

And he will later baptize Michael Stadler. And he also baptizes Balthasar Hubmeier, who's going to be another famous Anabaptist leader. Okay, so now, also, but anyway, after this disputation, Sadler is going to be in agreement with these three. That gets him in real big trouble with the Zurich authorities.

In fact, he will be briefly arrested, put in prison, and the only way he'll get out is to promise to leave the city and not come back again. So Michael Sadler will leave. He meets up with Wilhelm Rubelin, and Rubelin is going to baptize him. Now, we're not positive about that.

It is sort of inferred that Rubelin is the guy that baptizes him. And he also meets and marries a nun, a former nun. She was of the Benun order, which was one of these Catholic orders that was kind of influenced by this imitation of Christ movement, going forth, doing good work, serving the people.

And she had, much like him, come to this awakening conversion, and had decided to leave the convent. So these two marry, and they apparently were an incredible evangelistic team, going forth, witnessing to all that they came across. Now, as was often the case during this very intense period, we're talking, you know, 1522, 1525, just a lot of stuff was happening.

Many different Anabaptists were coming out of the woodwork. You kind of get the impression that, and there's all kinds of debate about just how the Anabaptist movement developed. My own personal theory from the reading is basically all over Europe, as people were leaving the Catholic Church for the first time, they're reading scriptures on their own, they were just primed and ready to jump onto.

The Anabaptist movement because the Anabaptist movement was pattering the actual lifestyle you see there in the book of Acts. And so it was just natural that a lot of these people, Anabaptists, come through, someone had read scripture and was really questioning how the Catholic Church, even how some of the initial reformers were going, and they hear these guys preach and say, Yeah, that's what the Scripture says, I'm going to follow that, you see.

And this seems to be happening all over. Well, a lot of these Anabaptists immediately run into persecution. I believe Jeff did a good job explaining what he called the magisterial church. That's a real fancy word. I just like to say state church. You got within the early Reformation those who just cannot get it out of their heads that church and state are wedded together, right?

And actually, that'd be Luther, that'd also be John Calvin. But the Anabaptists are considered to be radical reformers because they decide that, no, there needs to be a separation between church and state. And so that's going to get them in trouble whether they're, you know, running into Protestant Reformed authorities who are state church types or Roman Catholics.

All right. And so what we're going to have is persecution. Persecution of the Anabaptists by both Protestants who are state church Protestants and Roman Catholics who, of course, have always been state church in their views. And so, what you have is in Strasbourg, two reformers, Wolfgang Capito and Martin Busser.

And they're, of course, in correspondence with Luther, they're in correspondence with John Calvin. They basically are getting along with both those guys, even though those guys are having differences. And you have Stadler arriving there. And even though he is an Anabaptist, he's very well educated. And apparently, he just had such a Christian disposition.

He was always respectful of those he came into contact with, and he just displayed an incredible amount of love for people. And so, even though Busser and Caputo had arrested some Anabaptists and even had them in jail there in Strasbourg, Michael Stadler, they never do arrest. And in fact, they have meetings with him, conversations with him, and they have mutual respect for one another.

And this will remain throughout their Relationship, you know. And so, you know, they basically kind of, you know, give him their blessings, allow him to operate there in the city. And eventually, you know, he does break with them in terms of he just cannot agree with their infant baptism.

But even in that, he had friendly, respectful discussions. They gave their view, and basically, the view which the Presbyterian Church holds today is very similar to what Capito and Busser was arguing at that time. And he gave his view and he explained why he thought they were wrong.

But, you know, they more or less agreed to disagree agreeably, which is, you know, where we're supposed to be at today. All right, but anyway, he does eventually leave and he is going to become very involved in evangelization around the area close by there. Now, and by the way, when he is going to be martyred, Capito and Busser publicly grieve over his death, which is what you do not always see with some of the other reformers, the state church reformers.

Now, of course, you can see they were still, I don't think they're fully, fully, fully baptist here because see how they're baptizing. They just take a picture of water, pour it over your head. Although the, you know, Full emergent is coming soon hereafter. But he would go. Basically, he's working in this area of Horb and Rottenburg in modern Germany, which is right around that border region, you know, where you have Switzerland, Austria, and Germany kind of coming together.

And he was often, you know, running across the border from one area to the other area, being chased by authorities. Had huge numbers of conversions, and his method of operation was setting up house churches because they're easier, you know, to hide from the authorities that way. And he is going to be very successful in setting up house churches throughout this huge region.

But his center activity seems to have been at Horb. And as the movement grows, he realized that they need to have some sort of confession of what it was that they believed as Anabaptists. And so he gets a group of leaders throughout this region to come together. And I can't do German.

Schleiheim, I think, is how you say this, something like that. And which is, I believe, in Switzerland, Schleiheim. And they meet there and they draw up the first Anabaptist confession. And This is Schleinheim Confession. And in this, you have basically it's based on the Sermon on the Mount.

And they kind of literally tried to follow the Sermon on the Mount. And parts of the elements of the Schleinheim Confession, I read it, you can read it very, it's very short, very brief confession. It includes, of course, voluntary baptism for believers only. They did not believe in compulsion in religion.

In other words, freedom of conscience in matters of religion. They did not believe you could coerce someone to believe. You need to rely upon the Holy Spirit to draw that person. And the conversion should be, you know, a confessing voluntary conversion. And they, of course, the early Anabaptists pretty much held the view that all government was corrupt.

And at that time, it's pretty true, you know. And therefore, they were very pacifistic. They were nonviolent. And they held to mutual accountability of the church, church discipline, and all that sort of thing. Now, after this, Schleinheim, and by the way, it was passed unanimously. He had really prepared the way for them coming together and they prayed together and they hammered out this confession and it was passed unanimously.

Makes me wonder about how Baptists they were there. But anyway, you have, after this, they return to Horb, and there the authorities catch up with them and they are arrested. He and his wife, about 30 others, were arrested, including Ruben's wife, was with them. She was, although Rubelin wasn't with them at the time, they're arrested.

And in fact, Rubelin later on head out to Moravia. But anyway, they're put on trial, and because Horb had so many sympathizers to Stadler, they take him over to a town, Bensdorf, which had a reputation to be militantly Roman Catholic. And there they're going to put him on trial.

Now, Ferdinand I, who's at this point a prince, he's also a king, goodness gracious, he is king of different, you know, what's today, Czech Republic at one point, Hungary. Later on, he comes Holy Roman Emperor. He's brother Charles V. This guy is going to be such a troublemaker to the Anabaptists.

His view of the Anabaptists is that they should all immediately be given what he called the third baptism, which is drowning them. All right, that's what he wanted. And that's where he recommended when he learned that Stadler had been captured. And Stadler had a reputation throughout that area.

He's like one of the number one. Anabaptist at this time, and they were out to get him, and they were very ecstatic that they got him. And so he says, you know, drown him right away. And then local authorities said, no, no, we think it'd be better to give a show trial, basically.

You know, and it was a show trial. Everything was, you know, it's sort of like the trial of Jesus. It was set up they were going to convict him from the word go. In fact, his defense attorney basically was the mayor of Horb, who had always hated his guts, and he's supposed to be his defense attorney.

Okay, so anyway, these are some excerpts from Sadler's letter to his congregation before his execution. And I meant to bring a book on the Anabaptist movement by Eastap. It is an excellent book, it is a page turner, I think. And he covers a lot of the leaders I will not have time to cover with you.

It's one of the, I think, better books on the Anabaptist movement. And he's a good old Southern Baptist professor, you know, at one of our seminaries. It might have been Southwestern. He was at it one time. But anyway, Eastap points out that this letter is just incredibly touching and emphasizes love to all.

What's very remarkable, we read the letter, I only have a few excerpts of the letter. The whole letter is really worth reading. It almost reads like a Pauline epistle, by the way. He is totally lacking of any bitterness. And it opens with a Tranitarian salutation. Won't you guys read it for me?

Beloved companions in the Lord, the grace and mercy of God. Could you all turn over again? Beloved companions in the Lord, the grace and mercy of God, our Heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, and the power of their Spirit be with you, brethren and sisters, beloved of God.

And let no man take away from you the foundation which is laid by the letter of the Holy Scriptures and sealed with the blood of Christ and many witnesses of Jesus. The brethren have doubtless informed you that some of us are in prison, and the brethren being apprehended at Horeb, we were afterwards brought to Binsdorf.

At this time, numerous accusations were preferred against us by our adversaries. At one time, they threatened us with the gallows, at another with fire and sword. In this extremity, I surrendered myself entirely to the Lord's will and prepared myself, together with all my brethren and my wife, to die for his testimony's sake.

Hence, I deemed it necessary to animate you with this exhortation to follow us in the contest of God, that you may console yourselves with it and not faint under the chastening of the Lord. In short, beloved brethren and sisters, this letter shall be a valedictory to you, all who love God.

In truth and follow him. Beware of false brethren, for the Lord will probably call me to him. So take warning. I wait for my God. Pray without ceasing for all that are in bonds. God be with you all. Amen. All right. Now, he wrote this letter fully realizing that he's going to die.

All right. And so the charges that are brought against him is treason to the emperor, denying the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. You know, basically, he had the Zwinglian view of the Lord's Supper, which I think Jeff went over with y'all last time. And he, of course, rejects child baptism, reject extreme unction, dishonoring of the saints.

That's what he's accused of. Teaching against swearing oaths, practicing eating the bread and the wine during fellowship meals. If we were back in those days and we were going to have our Lord's fellowship meal, as it comes up, we would all be guilty of committing a capital crime, the way we do it here, which is pretty much the way they were doing it.

And, of course, he's also condemned for marrying, because remember, he had been a former Catholic monk, and advocating non-resistance to the Turks. Now, that one was really kind of taken out of context, was used to smear against him. He had Written a letter in which he basically had said, you know, if warfare was legitimate, which by the way, he doesn't think it is, you know, he would probably be tempted to fight with the Turks rather than the basically Catholic Christians.

And what he's talking about is he's saying the Turks, you know, since they don't know any better, they're making warfare, but these so-called Christians are supposed to know better, and they, you know, are doing cruelties that is as bad or even worse than what the Turks are doing.

And so that was taken out of context and used against him at the trial. Of course, Sadler denied that he had defied the imperial edicts or dishonored the saints. He defended the other Charles charges as moral and biblical. And he denied the courts should have jurisdiction over religious doctrine in the first place.

After Sadler replied to all the charges, he then denied that they were contrary to the Word of God. And the following is the end of his defense. Would y'all read that? In conclusion, you ministers of God, I admonish you to consider the end for which God has appointed you, to punish the evil and to defend and protect the pious.

Whereas then we have not acted contrary to God and the gospel, you will find that neither I nor my brethren and sisters have offended in word or deed against any authority. Therefore, you ministers of God, if you have. Not heard or read the Word of God, send for the most learned and for the sacred books of the Bible, of whatsoever language they may be, and let them confer with us in the Word of God.

And if they prove to us with the Holy Scriptures that we err and are in the wrong, we will gladly desist and recant and also willingly suffer the sentence and punishment for that of which we have been accused. But if no error is proven to us, I hope to God that you will be converted and receive instruction.

And to give you an idea of just the tone of the trial, while the judges are conferring, the city clerk enters into conversation with Sadler, and they're saying all kinds of just very nasty, unkind things. And this gives you a little bit of a taste of that. By the way, this is all recorded.

Witnesses were writing this down, and it's later put in what a very famous book that's very precious to the Anabaptists called The Martyr's Mirror. And so this is where this is contained in more detail than I could have here. It says, Town Clerk, oh, you infamous, desperate villain and monk, shall we dispute with you?

The hangman shall dispute with you. See, he is mad that they're allowing him to even speak, which you heard formally. Saddler said, God's will be done. Town clerk, it would be better if you had never been born. Saddler, God knows what is best. Town clerk, you arch heretic, you have seduced the pious.

If only they would forsake their error and accept grace. Saddler, grace belongs to God alone. Town clerk, you desperate villain and arch heretic. I tell you, if there were no hangman here, I would hang you myself and think that I've done God a service. Sadler, God will judge rightly.

You know, see, everything he answered very peacefully to all their remarks. And that's the whole thing about the Turkish thing, which I think I've already explained. Sadler, of course, is that the panel of judges come back. It's preordained. The sentence for execution stated, Michael Sadler shall be committed to the executioner.

The latter shall take him to the square and there first cut out his tongue and then forge him fast to a wagon and there with glowing hot iron tongs twice tear pieces of flesh from his body. Then on the way to the site of execution, five more times more as above, and then burn his body to powder as an arch heretic.

Okay. And this is what they do. They take tongs, which they've heated to the red hot, and they put out, pull off pieces of his flesh, and then they march him down. As they're marching him down, they do this again. They failed to cut out his entire tongue, though.

They only cut... Just a part of his tongue, and he could still talk, and he is exhorting the people as he's going to his execution to follow Christ all the way. And when they began to start burning him, he apparently had told, got word out to the followers that are in amidst the crowd that are actually Anabaptists, but people don't realize they are.

He had told them that he would attempt to make a signal to them that Christ was deficient even in persecution and torture. And so as he is pushed into the flames, the binds that were holding his hands were literally burned off his hands. He was still alive, and he raised his hands up.

And it is said that as he was dying, this is what he shouted out: Almighty, eternal God, Settler prayed as he was bound to the stake, Thou art the way and the truth, because I have not been shown to be in error. I will, with thy help on this day, testify to the truth and seal it with my blood.

Now, his wife, Margarita, we really don't know much about her, which is a real shame, because she apparently was a man. Major support to him. And they tried everything they could to get her to recant. And in the trial, apparently, the local authority here that was actually behind the arrest of Stadler was a duke, I forget his name, and his wife was present watching this.

And she was so taken by Michael Stadler's wife's countenance during the proceedings that she personally visits her in prison and tried to persuade her to recant, and she promised her a position in her household. You know, in other words, I'll give you a job, I will take care of you if you just recant.

And she steadfastly refused. And so a few days later, they take a stone tied to a rock and they put a noose around her neck and they throw her into the river and she drowns. And this is the example. Now, the importance of Michael Michael Stadler provides solid stabilizing leadership in the wake of the martyrdom of the first Anabaptist leaders, Grebel, Matz, and Blalock.

Drafted the Schleiheim Confession, which was the first Anabaptist confession, gave the Anabaptists a source of unity and identity. And some of the statements in that confession hold right down to this day. Elements of it appear in the Baptist faith and message that we basically adhere to. And wrote numerous letters and articles that helped to articulate the Anabaptist beliefs and, of course, set an unforgettable example of Christian faith.

His death totally backfired. In fact, the Catholic authorities were somewhat embarrassed at how many people condemned what was done to him and the example he set. And there's no telling how many people were so disturbed and forced to search themselves that they too then become Anabaptists. You know, and Anabaptist was a European-wide movement.

You know, it's not just this little area. You know, later on, you get to the Mennonites, almost 10% of Holland goes Mennonite. You have them scattering all over Europe. So some of them go deep into the Ukraine, even. And yet, through all this, was just vicious, vicious persecution.

In Swabia, Estep points out that at one point they hired 400 policemen just to hunt down and kill Anabaptists on the spot. That was not enough. They wound up before it was over with, and they do totally suppress the Anabaptists in Swabia, but it took a thousand policemen going out.

And just killing all the Anabaptists. And so to just illustrate, these are illustrations from Martyr's Mirror. And you got Jan Lucan, I don't know that's how you pronounce his name, but he was an Anabaptist illustrator, and he researched different stories to illustrate what the Anabaptists went through. And so most of these, there's one that's not by him.

These illustrations, woodcut prints. This just shows a young girl, Anabaptist, they have her back uncovered there, and they're birching her, as they call it, beat her to death with these birch rods. This is, they sometimes get fired. In this case, it's hard to get the person close to the flames if they didn't start off with them on a stake.

And in this case, they tie him to a ladder, and then they basically turn the ladder over on top of the flames. This is a Dutch Anabaptist, Anakin Hendrix, charged with heresy. This is another major Anabaptist leader. In fact, he's one of the ones I considered giving a talk on, but decided not to.

Dirk Wilhelms, Anabaptist, he was contemporaneous with Stadler. In fact, one time he was in the city. He wasn't as nice as Stadler was. He did not get along with Booser and Booser in Capito Camp. Him out of Strasbourg, but he was quite the evangelist, but he was also quite the Christian.

This guy in the water drowning was one of his pursuers trying to arrest him. Apparently, I don't know what happened exactly, but he fell in the water, was drowning. Dirk saves his life, and as a reward, he's arrested, and then he's going to be burned at the stake.

You know, this is, of course, another Anabaptist martyr burned at the stake at Salzburg because he persisted in his faith and his tortures before he's put to the stake are quite horrible. This is a young lady here, Maria Manjou, was drowned in 1552, southern Germany. Martyrs Mirror states the authorities tormented her for three days.

And when I say torment, they're torturing her. But she would not forsake her faith. And of course, Martyrs Mirror gives a little comment for, according to scriptures, no one is ever confounded who fears God. And you notice they have the priest there trying to talk her into recanting up to the last moment.

And this is Anakin Jans of Rotterdam, a young lady who was convicted because someone heard her singing an Anabaptist hymn. And so she's going to be arrested. She refuses to recant from being an Anabaptist. So they're going to execute her. She's on her way here. You know, the guy's got the rope around her waist and he's leading her to be drowned.

And she has a little boy in her hands, her little baby boy. She's handing him off, you know, please with somebody to take care of my child. And a local baker takes the child, and he later becomes the mayor of Rotterdam. This child does. This is Simon Dim Kramer, Anabaptist martyr, burned at the stake 1553 outside of the town of Bergen-Zum, Holland.

He was a market vendor, and he was standing there and surprised when this Catholic procession, I don't know whether they had the host with them or a statue or what, really not quite sure. But he, of course, was a man of his convictions. He refused to bow down to this Catholic procession.

And that, of course, identified him as an Anabaptist. And so he's going to be taken and executed for the crime of standing, you know, as this Catholic procession is passing by. And this is particularly gruesome here. These were two Anabaptists, you know, executed in Ghent, Belgium, 14th February 1554.

And of course, you know, he's stabbing there to make sure he's dead, which is kind of ridiculous. But anyway, you know, they're burned at the stake there in Gent. And this is an incredible story here. This is a young Dutch student who is 18 years old, converts to Anabaptism.

And when they find out about it, they arrest him, and they then torture him by drilling these drills, they call it Tirlingen, through his knees, down through his ankles. And the pain must have been indescribable. And throughout, he refused to recant, and he dies. And after doing this horrible torture, they then burn him to death.

And this is 1549. Six men, two women, belonging to the Anabaptists in Amsterdam were burned at the stake at the same time. All the aforementioned friends ended their lives with great joy and were burnt alive. This is another illustration by Jan Lucan. This is etching an account of 18 Anabaptists burned to death in Salzburg, Austria, 1528.

See, this is pretty close to the time of Stadler. So Stadler is by no means the only one who dies. And this is an execution in which 350 at one time Anabaptists are going to be put to death near Alsi in the Palatinate in 1529 on account of the mandate of the Holy Roman Emperor against Anabaptists.

And they were killed various different ways. Some were beheaded. You notice there, at one point, the man's having his fingers chopped off before they execute him. They're put to death, some were beheaded, some were burned, some were drowned, 350 of them. And just to show you, meantime in England, you have not as many because there weren't as many Anabaptists in England, at least initially.

And this is under King James I, you know, where we get the King James Bible, although he really wasn't responsible for that in terms of, well, he authorized it, but that's about it. He never even paid the people who did the work, by the way. But anyway, James is having this Anabaptist here burned at the death, you know, Bartolome Liat.

And I mentioned, you know, that many of the Anabaptists, as they're being executed, they would preach while the execution is going on, which is pretty incredible. And so to stop them from preaching, they came up with this insidious device. This is a tongue screw. And they would basically put your tongue in this device so you could not talk while they're killing you.

And this particular one, Hans Brent's tongue screw, after he's burned to death, one of these Anabaptists comes up, digs through the ashes, finds the screw, and takes it. And it's preserved in Mennite Church Museum in Amsterdam today. You know, which shows you, even in death, they were trying to share Christ.

And this gives a map showing the concentrations of Anabaptists in Europe at the time. The green would be sort of the Swiss Anabaptists. Up there, you have the purple, which are the Dutch Anabaptists. Then you have the German Anabaptists in blue. And then over there in what's today the Czech Republic, which became a refuge for many, many of the Anabaptists, you have an area there as well.

And now we could, let's watch this little film clip. Okay, we have five minutes. Any questions? Yes, sir. Oh, could we run the mic back to them? Somebody's watching online, they can't hear him. Do you all have any estimation on how many Anabaptists were killed? No, sir. I've never seen it.

I'm sure somebody has some figures out there. I haven't come across any that. One of the problems with the Anabaptists, a lot of them were peasants, and so they didn't count, literally, you know. Don't have good numbers. We really don't know. Yes, sir. Tom? Could somebody give him the mic?

My understanding of the Anabaptist movement, that it had a very large spectrum because it was a homeschool, or not homeschool, house church type, and probably homeschool too. But that you had your, to put it in modern terms, you had your solid Anabaptist, like you say, at Zurich, and then you have your Benny Hinn Anabaptist, and then you have your David Koresh Anabaptist, and kind of they all just got lumped into one.

I don't know what your studies are. The Benny Hinn, as you would say, to Anabaptist, that is, I think, grossly exaggerated. They were a minority, from what I'm finding. But the trouble about that is, it's just what's that crazy so-called Baptist church that does the protests at veterans' funerals?

Huh? Westboro. All right, you know how many members they actually have? My understanding is one family. Okay, and it's not really a Baptist church. But that's the entire Baptist. In fact, that's why a lot of Baptist churches, because that one little group are dropping their name Baptists. And now there were more, shall we say, wackos in the early Anabaptist movement, because you've got to remember, a lot of these people, if they do.

Did not have good leadership, you know, they're all over the place. But actually, the mainstream Anabaptist movements had good leadership. Minnow Simmons was Trinitarian, Baltazar Hubmeiers, Trinitarian. The majority of them were actually, but what we know about them is mainly from their enemies writing about them. And a lot of that material, of course, are just unfair smears.

I'm sorry, I couldn't understand the video words, but just one question. Are there any Anabaptists left in America that follow Sattler? That's a difficult way in which you put it. I would say the Mennonites have remained fairly consistent. And their doctrine is relatively stable, and they still evangelize.

The Amish, one of the tragedies of the Amish is they no longer evangelize. I mean, the Amish have turned totally internally. And it's really ironic, you know, here you have a movement that began that rejects rituals and rejects traditions of man, so to speak. And yet, much of the Amish today, that's what they're, they have all these restrictions and rules.

And it's almost in some Amish, they will not even allow conversions. And this is leading to big problems genetically, if you get my drift here, because there's so much intermarriage, they have all kinds of health problems because of that. I should say all of them, but in some communities, it's a real problem.

But with the Mennonites, they're very... But you see, this is still dynamic. Some Mennonites are very similar to modern Baptists. And we're going to see that Baptists, as in the Southern Baptists, there's definitely differences between Southern Baptists and the Anabaptists. And I think what the real difference is is this distinction over being in the world but not of the world.

And the problem with some of these Anabaptist groups, particularly as I see with the Amish, they were so wanting to get away from the corruptness of the world that they made the same mistakes that the Catholics made with their monastic movement. They tried to shut out the world.

You see, we're to be in the world, but not of the world. And the Amish went the route of being, you know, not in the world, trying to withdraw and hide away from the world. At least that would be my criticism of them, you see. Whereas most of the English Baptists, we have the view, you know, we're to be in the world.

have friends who are not Christians, work alongside them, but live a life that is pleasing unto Christ and not live a, shall we say, ungodly life, you know. And so that would does that sort of answer your question? Yes, it does. Can you recommend because the book took away?

Well, well, I said E-Steps, Anabaptists, I forget the exact title, but his name is E-Step, and I think it's the Anabaptist Movement, is the name of the book. I meant to bring it and forgot to. I'll try to bring it next time. It's very well written, very readable.

Is it safe to say that we trace our roots to Sadler? To what? To Sadler. Well, any one person, you can keep that. Any one person, I would say no, but certainly Sadler is part of our Baptist heritage and DNA. Yes, sir. Can I answer that? Yeah. I think one way to think of it is we're reformed in our soteriology.

That is, we're reformed in our understanding of how salvation works, reformed in authority, but we're Anabaptist in our ecclesiology. In other words, we believe only believers are in the church. So we have been influenced in our view of salvation by reformers. We have been influenced by our view of the church by the Anabaptist, which later we just dropped the name Anna and become Baptist because we are saying, well, we don't believe in rebaptizing, we believe in baptism.

What you call infant baptism, we don't call baptism. But I think that's a good way to think of it. We're reformed in our soteriology and Anabaptist in our ecclesiology. And also, you know, we believe in believers' baptism. Anabaptists believed in believers' baptism. We believe in the concept of priesthood of the believer.

Anabaptists believe in the concept of priesthood believer. We basically adhere to this idea of separation of church and state. Anabaptists believed in separation of church and state. In fact, they're the first ones to come up with that concept, although I think you see it there in the New Testament, really.

And so there's a lot of similarities. And really, you know, if you get to some later Anabaptist leaders like Hubmeier, Hubmeier, you know, we do not believe in pacifism, most of them back. Of course, that's a matter of personal conscience. Hubmeyer did not either. He'd be more aligned with what the general Baptist view is today.

So as Tom said, Have a big umbrella because of this idea of freedom of conscience as you come to scripture, reading it as guided by the Holy Spirit. Some people will think they're guided by the Holy Spirit and they're being guided by their own selves instead. You're going to have differences in interpretation of scripture, obviously.

But there's far more agreement than I think disagreement. Okay, we are out of time. In fact, we're over. Thank y'all so much. All right, let me just pray real quick. Lord Jesus, we thank you for the example that has been set by your followers of the past. Lord, may it convict us and make us realize, Lord, how we need to strive even more to serve you.

In Jesus' name, amen.