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We're today back. We don't have it up front. It's coming, though. And last time we did Zwingli. Two of my favorite YouTuber historians, Reeves and Gore, I think they're both Presbyterians. They do some excellent histories. For whatever reason, they wouldn't do Zwingli. I thought that's kind of interesting.

But we left off last time, Zwingli, of course, being killed at the Second Battle of Capelle. He was chaplain to the troops there. But anyway, let's go on and let's see, are we still working? And let's just recap from last time. So let's see. How about Justin? Would you grab that mic and just read off basically the summation of the conclusions Zwingli came to, which are very similar to Luther.

Zwingli's main teachings were: one, the church is born of the Word of God and Christ alone is its head. Two, the Church's laws are binding only when they agree with Scripture. Three, Christ alone is man's righteousness. Four, Scripture does not teach Christ's corporeal presence in the bread and wine at the Lord's Supper.

Five, the Mass is a gross affront to the sacrifice and death of Christ. Six, there is no biblical foundation for intercession of the dead for purgatory. Or for images and pictures. And seven, that marriage is lawful to all, including clergy. Okay, any questions about any of those? All right.

Now, I thought Psalm 51 would be very good for our scriptural sort of meditation as we flick upon today's lecture. Because I don't know if you thought about what I told you about Zwingli the last time. Today we're going to see one of his real failings. And that is how he treated a group of very zealous young disciples of his that pushed them in a direction that leads to the founding of the Anabaptist movement.

And literally, Zwingli is going to have blood on his hands because one of these young men, Conrad Grabel, Zwingli will become so paranoid that he's going to accuse his father of being a French spy, which really was just an excuse to get his father arrested. And ultimately, his father's going to be executed due to Zwingli.

And of course, Zwingli is going to run these guys out of town. And it's really, really kind of sad. Now, we know David's great sin was Bathsheba. So with Zwingli, it's not so much a matter of adultery with a woman, but I would say it's a Adultery with the government.

He and Luther just could not quite get to the point of understanding that the church should be independent of the state. That there's always, one of the foundational things about coming out and a baptism, and is still part of our Baptist heritage, is this idea of the corrupting influences of state, church-state relations.

And Zwingli chose to go with the civil government and allow the civil government to even determine doctrine. And this is also a problem within Lutheranism. And these young zealous men that are going to oppose Zingli, I think they were correct in what they were arguing, but they certainly lack Christian, shall we say, patience.

And of course, Zwingli, I think his fault is also not having patience, and it's a very unfortunate confrontation that we're heading towards today. So let's just reflect on this. And why don't let's see. Michael, why don't you read for us? Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.

For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness.

Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. Purge me with high sip, and I shall be clean, wash me, and I shall be wider than snow.

Let me hear joy and gladness. Let these bones that you have broken rejoice. Noah, why don't you take it? Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you. Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation. O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise, for you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it.

You will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. Do good to Zion in your good pleasure. Build up the walls of Jerusalem. Then will you delight in right sacrifices? In burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings, then bowls will be offered on your altar.

Okay. So Zwingli dies at the Second Battle of Capelle. And then what happens is the Catholic cantons that defeated Zurich were not able to coerce the Protestant cantons back into Catholicism. And there's a little bit of chaos there for a while. But ultimately, Zurich, which is where Zwingli was based, remains Protestant.

And the person that takes over for Zwingli was yet another young disciple who, unlike these others we're about to talk about, did not break with him. He remained very close to Zwingli. And he is going to replace Zwingli, and he will be the pastor there at the gross monster Meister, I can't say it right, church, which we're about to return to.

And Heinrich Bullinger is really one of those figures of the Reformation that deserves a lot more attention. A lot of people don't, his name is not as familiar. At the time that John Calvin was getting his career started, Bullinger was the better-known person than John Calvin was. And in fact, many of the things that we sometimes call Calvinism today actually go back to Bullinger.

There's quite a number of People that are involved in the formation of what we call reformed theology. Zwingli sort of got the ball rolling. Bullinger is the person that I would say brought it to its maturity. He had a ministry that spanned 44 years. And like Zwingli, he too did expositional preaching, you know, word by word, verse by verse, you know, of teaching of the Bible.

And so he is born in a small Swiss town. And what's kind of unusual about Bullinger is he is the son of a priest, but unlike some of these priests who had families, and by the way, you had several priests that they would have concubines. And this was not considered to be adulterous, it's not considered to be a bad thing, is just a different level of relationships that was legal back then.

And some of these priests would get special dispensations to they couldn't marry, but they could have a concubine. All right. And so he was married to, can't even pronounce her name, Anna. We'll just leave it there. And the local bishop of Constance basically had clerical oversight of the district, and he allowed clerical concubinage.

And so this priest, Had this lady as his concubine, but they lived as husband and wife, and they lived in the same household, and they had these different children, and he's one of the children, and he had, it would be almost like a Protestant situation, husband, wife, and kids, and he's there at church all the time.

This is sometimes shocking when Catholics hear this, but this was not that uncommon. You see, it's really after the Protestant Reformation and the Roman Catholic Council of Trent that they really, really solidified this idea of clerical celibacy. You know, it's almost in reaction to the Protestants say, well, if you say you can be married, we say, no, you can't, and you can't have any relations.

But so he's raised there in the church. His father's the priest. His mother is technically a concubine, but for all practical intents and purposes, it's like a married life situation. But that should probably help you understand why Bullinger is going to so readily, when Protestantism comes, he's going to come around to the conclusion that it's okay for clerics to marry as a result of this.

So he is going to pastor in Zurich for 44 years. And he does expositional sermons. And he preached somewhere between seven and seven thousand five hundred sermons. And these are very, and he's sort of like the John MacArthur of his day, really, in many ways. And like John MacArthur, you know, he's compiled his sermons, and you've got the MacArthur commentaries, which are just absolutely excellent.

His commentaries become very famous throughout all Europe. And this is being accomplished, you know, before John Calvin is even getting going. So anyway, he produces his sermons. His sermons are very biblical, very simple, clear, practical, and in all, you know, he preaches a large number. Some believe Bullinger, and now what we're going to look at today are the Anabaptists, and one of the things I want to say about Bullinger, when Comrade Grab, well, excuse me, Felix Monz, one of the Anabaptists, the first one to be executed there in Lamatte River, he had the job of walking with Felix Monks to his execution, and his job was to try to beg Felix to recant.

And he begged him all the way to the river, and of course he refuses to recant, and they're going to drown him. And I think this really had, and I don't know, this speculation on my part, but I think this is probably one of the reasons why Bullinger is going to be so unlike Zwingli.

In terms of using the government to coerce people in their Christian conscience. He later on would come to the idea that the Anabaptists, although he didn't agree with them, in fact, I'll give a quote where he says something pretty harsh about them, he actually was pretty nice to them compared to what Zwingli and some of the other authorities were doing with Anabaptists.

I kind of repeated myself here, so let's go to this. He opposed religious persecution, and when he became the pastor, he said, I do not want any Anabaptists or Roman Catholics, they should not be punished for not presenting their children for baptism. That's always the big issue, or not attending the Lord's Supper, which is the other big issue.

That's why Jeff's going to handle that for you next time. He was merely banned from holding civil office. What Bullinger did also with the Anabaptists, let's see, yeah. He said, okay, if you're Anabaptist, you cannot basically take part in the government and we're punishing you. Well, the civil authorities saw, oh, yeah, he's being real tough on the Anabaptists.

Does anybody know why that's not being tough on the Anabaptists at all? They didn't burn. That's right. They didn't believe in participating in government, civil government. The Anabaptists were very extreme. They felt that all government is so corrupt that you shouldn't even partake in it. And of course, Bullinger knew this.

And really, in a way, he's protecting the Anabaptists by pretending to punish them. If you get my drift here, he says all these things that Anabaptists that he knew privately within their teachings that they didn't want it to partake in, he says, okay, you can't do that. And of course, knowing that they didn't want to do it anyway, but that also got the heat off the Anabaptists from the government authorities because they thought, okay, well, you know, this is punishment enough, all right, so to speak.

And but anyway, so this is Heinrich Bullinger, and no, four or four years in, you see, he's much older here, and he opposed religious persecution. Okay. Now, before we jump into the Anabaptists, remember, the Anabaptists are Protestants. Of course, even today I hear some Baptists say, well, we're not really Protestants.

We're more radical than the Protestants were. They're pretty radical, but they're still definitely Protestants. And they come out of the Reform movement. And we're going to find out that there's always two types of Anabaptists. When you get to England, you have the General Baptists and the Particular Baptists.

The General Baptists tend to be Armenian. We'll get to that later. And the Particular tend to be. Reformed. And you've always have had this tension within Baptist. Southern Baptists, in case you're wondering, they're the great compromisers. In Southern Baptists, you've got this big umbrella. You can go from almost Armenian to fully reformed.

But part of the Baptist faith and message, basically, what they say, once saved, always saved. That is a very big part of being Southern Baptists and whether you realize it or not. I was discussing with Tom about this the other day, and that means you're a three-pointer or a four-pointer already if you believe that.

You just don't know it. Okay, but anyway, I probably get in trouble for saying that, but it's really true. All right, but anyway, you got Martin Luther, here's what he said about the Anabaptists: Demons possess worse than demons, okay? And John Calvin called the Anabaptists furious madmen, but then he married one.

All right, all right. And Heinrich Bullinger called the Anabaptists satanic, okay? So the Anabaptists, in case you don't get the point, I want to really drill in. They do not have a good reputation with the Reformers, which, and part of that is, is they come out of the Reform movement, and it's not so surprising they would be very upset with them for that reason.

But the Lutherans didn't like the Anabaptists. The Catholics definitely don't like the Anabaptists. So they were going to be beat up on by just about everybody. Now, part of this is because an event that's going to happen quite some time from what we're going to get into today, and I don't know if I ever have time to get into it in great detail anyhow, so I'll just mention it in passing.

You're going to have a group of very extreme, very radical Anabaptists take over the city of Munster. And when they take that city over, they really kind of go crazy. They decide that they're the new Jerusalem and they want to restore the Davidic kingdom. So they, you know, like King David.

And since in the Old Testament, they noticed that they had more than one wife, they installed polygamy. And I mean, then they have all these apocalyptic visions and just they go from one crazy thing to another crazy thing. They become very coercive and basically very totalitarian in how they're running the city.

And ultimately, what happens is the Lutherans who are fighting the Catholics decided to have a truce, and the Catholics and the Lutherans besiege Munster and they take it over and they execute all the Anabaptists. In fact, the cathedral there still has two. Two iron cages that a couple of the Anabaptists were executed in, hung up in those cages.

You don't want to be an Anabaptist, sorry. Now, that's extreme. The thing about that is the majority of Anabaptists were nothing like those guys at Munster. The thing that we're going to find out that is so typical of Anabaptists is the very name, what does Anabaptist mean? Actually, it's re, re-baptizers.

Now, why would they call them re-baptizers? Because they didn't, except the first infant Captain. Yeah, right. All these guys are former Catholics. All the Protestants starting off were former Catholics. They had already been baptized as infants. And a lot of them didn't seem to need to be re-baptized again.

And baptism, as hopefully Jeff will get into next time, it was a very touchy thing because it had become so interwoven with the state and the government. You see, you didn't go to clerk court and get your birth certificate back then. You go to the church. Even today, in many European countries, to get your birth certificate, what they have, it's not so much the birth certificate that's important to show citizenship, it's the baptismal certificate when you're an infant.

And so to go to adapt baptism, that would just mess up so much. And that's one reason. The different state governments were so opposed to it, you know, for secular governmental reasons, which is just that's only part of it, but that's a big part of it. So, the Anabaptists, they believe in adult baptism, believers' baptism.

That's what they're going to come around to conclude. And they also are very radically going to adhere to this idea long before even Roger Williams comes to the United States. Well, then the British colony or English colonies and establishes principle of separation, church and state, they're already practicing that, you know, this idea of separating church and state.

And they also have a very radical, really it's not radical, I would say it's quite biblical view of priesthood of the believer. This idea that you don't have to go through to a priest. Now, the Reformers, both Calvin and Luther, Bullinger, they had a conception of that idea of priesthood of the believer, but then in practice they didn't carry it through, whereas the Anabaptists do.

There's this radical notion that God is no respecter of persons, and therefore, you know, this idea of differentiating people, nobility, and things of this nature, that's not Christian in their view. Okay, so all those are things that are coming down the pipe. And some of these ideas are in flux at this point, and they're Form, they're forming, and these young guys we're about to get into are going to be the ones to do it.

All right, so we're still in Zurich to launch off our beginnings of the Anabaptist Grossmunster Church. I'm very jealous, Brother T, I understand, was just there toured this. And it really has an interesting history. It goes way, way, way back to Roman times. The legend of the founding of Grossmunster Church was: you see these saints here?

You notice a little bit strange there, right? They're headless saints. And according to the legend, you had this Theven Legion stationed in Switzerland in 286, and the whole legion apparently converted to Christianity. And two of the leaders in the legion were these brothers, Felix and Regula. And for that reason, I understand, I wouldn't know for sure myself, but I understand the names Felix and Regula are still big, big names in Switzerland.

It goes back to this. And they had a slave that was with them as well. And they all convert Christianity. And because they convert to Christianity, they're condemned to be executed. They fled to the region around Zurich to hide out. They're basically caught and tried and executed. But when they're executed, you know, you You have this claim that they chopped off their heads and the bodies, however, stood up, knelt down, picked up their heads, walked 40 paces, bowed, and prayed, and then they died.

Okay, that's the legend. All right. Now, the second legend is, many years later, Charlemagne, Holy Roman Emperor, you know, in fact, the first Holy Roman Emperor, Charlemagne is hunting in this area, and he's about to shoot a deer, and the deer kneels there in the forest, and someone tells him, well, this is the place where Felix and Regula, you know, were martyred.

And so he decides, he's so impressed with the legend, he orders that this church be built. And it's built in 1100, all right, this Grossmunster church. So it was a pretty impressive rotation here. I think I heard it. Okay, what did you think? It's pretty impressive, and to the left of it, if you look at it at that angle, there's a statue of the Queen Lady holding a Bible in one hand and a sword in the other.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so very, very impressive place there. Okay, so you got, this is also the place where this Anabaptist movement begins. So let's see, what do I want to talk about? All right. You have basically three leaders. In fact, let me just jump here. Here they are.

You got Conrad Grebel, George Blaivrock, and Felix Mons. You notice Felix? All right. Very popular name. Now, of these three, probably Conrad Grebel is the most influential. I guess some would say he's sort of the brains of the movement as it gets going. I'm getting out of order here, but I'm just going to free walk this here for a few seconds.

Conrad, I think I need to give you a little more than what I have in the PowerPoints. He starts out, I would say, sort of like a spoilt rich kid brat. The Grebels, very old family there in Zurich. Even prior to him, for 100 years, a Grebel had served on the city council or been the equivalent of the mayor or something like that, going back 100 years.

His father was, his money is iron worker or something dealing with iron. His father is very, very successful. He went to school there at the church that I just showed you. They had a school there. Basically, we would call it elementary high school. He goes there. Then his father sends him off to university.

He went to, I believe. Leave Vienna first, and there he made a lifelong friend, Vadian, who would later marry his sister. And this is why we know so much about Conrad Grebel. He would write him letters. And the real sad thing about it is they were intensely close friends in college, and then even after that, but when this whole controversy over their religious beliefs springs up, Vadian ultimately is going to betray Conrad Grebel.

But for some reason, kept those letters and then turned them over some library, and they're preserved to this day. And the reason I say I'm kind of surprised about this because he included letters which doesn't make him look too good. I kind of wonder if Vadian felt guilty about what he did.

I don't know. But anyway, the letters are really remarkable. They're very remarkable. And we start out, Conrad Grebel is a college student, right back to Vatian. His dad is going to get basically sort of like a scholarship from the king of France to send Conrad Grebel to the University of Paris.

And that is later going to get his daddy in big, big trouble because there was a ban on them taking scholarship from the French because there's always antipathy towards the French there in Zurich. And that's what later on. You're going to have Zwingli accusing his father of being a spy, and that'll ultimately be the thing that gets him executed.

But at the time, you know, the attitude was, well, everyone's doing it, so he got this money for his son, sent him off, and at college he gets in all kinds of trouble. He was not a Christian. He was in the party life, apparently chasing the young girls and getting into all kinds of brawls.

One occasion, one of the young men there having this big fight with some of the French there, and at least one of the Frenchmen got killed in the fight. Now, Grebel wasn't the one doing the killing, but it really affected him, you know, that this happened. Well, his father is not very, very happy, cuts him off, you know, in terms of funding.

He ultimately has to come back to Zurich, and he's feeling very low. He confesses to his friend Vadian that, you know, he's just a loser, basically. Gets back there, and his father then, you know, after he shows a little sorrow for his behavior, decides, okay, well, this time I'm going to send you to Pisa, University of Pisa.

And he said, well, I feel kind of bad, you know, taking the money from your dad. And they said, well, hey, I got this. And then he changed his mind, so I'll go to Pisa. But then he falls in love. Beautiful young girl, Barbara. Is her name. And he wants to marry her.

But the classic problem was: guess what? Barbara is lower class. He's upper class. And the big thing about marriage back then, young ladies, doesn't matter how pretty you are, what's going to get that guy to marry you? Dowry. She didn't have one. See, girls, what do you think about that, ladies?

You know, you had to pay the guy to marry you. All right. All right. So, anyway, but he wants to marry her. The dad is very upset with him, says, No, you can't marry her. He says, I'll give you money to go hire a concubine. Boy, that's good, Daddy, huh?

All right. And, but I don't want you to marry, you know, I want you to marry a girl, wait, and go marry a girl upper class and all this kind of stuff. Well, daddy goes on a business trip. Conrad marries her while daddy's gone. Feta comply. Can you imagine what it was like when Daddy gets home?

And of course, Mama was even more upset, apparently. Okay. But, you know, Feta Comply. Well, at this point, for about nine months, there's no letters between him and Thaddeon, so we're not quite sure what happened those nine months. But he apparently meets up with Zwingli, and we think he is probably converted by Zwingli's preaching.

And then he and Zwingli have this intense, very, very close conversation. Friendship. I mean, he was just a zealous follower of Zwingli. And you got to remember, these are exciting days of the beginnings of the Protestant movement. Zwingli, at this point, is still officially a Roman Catholic priest, but he's basically going against everything the Catholic Church is teaching, you know.

And they, it was exciting times. You know, they would, there's mention in one narrative where this monk comes in to do some preaching, and Zwingli and Grebel are there, and the monk begins preaching some stuff that's totally non-biblical. And they would interrupt him in the server and say, hey, brother, you're erring there.

And then they would tell him why he was erring. And, you know, this is not something you normally would do, right? You know, out of order, so to speak. But anyway, they become very close. Zwingli was planning to build a school, you know, like later Calvin would do.

And he was hoping that Grebel was going to, you know, be one of the main teachers and leaders in the school. Okay. All right. Well, let's go. Let me get back on order here, and we're going to see where they're going to have a break. Now, actually, I'll dive into it right here.

And Zwingli would meet with Grebel, and actually, these other two guys, too, but at different times. But eventually, at one point, they're all three be together. And they're meeting with Zwingli. These Zwinglian sort of Bible studies, they were noticing more and more contradictions between the teaching of Scripture and Roman Catholic traditions.

And so they were wanting to get rid of the traditions that are not based biblically. And one of the things they noticed was this whole thing about the Mass. All right. And Zwingli was saying, well, you know, we need to get rid of the Mass. And he also, you know, later on, the big issue comes over baptism.

All right. But they're studying the scripture and they decide they're going to have a disputation. That means it's sort of a debate. And the city council is going to be there to judge the debate. And so they debate with the Catholics over the whole issue of the Mass.

And Zwingli does a brilliant job of just tearing to pieces, you know, several elements that they're teaching in the Mass. Of course, you know, Zwingli was totally against transubstantiation. And as a result of this, they then go to the city council. And what do y'all think? Well, the city council, you got to remember, this was a big thing to get rid of the mass.

And the city council, you know, these guys are not theologians, and they're politicians. And you know, politicians, they want. Protect their own skin first and foremost. And so they want to come up with sober compromise. So, how are you going to compromise with the Lord's Supper? And so Zwingli says, okay, well, we'll do it gradually.

Well, Grebel and Felix Mons and Blayrock, they know, no, no, you're compromising the Word of God. And this is where the split begins. They really split over this. And basically, they won't back down. And Zwingli, now you've got to understand from Zwingli's view, he was in a very tough situation because, you know, he's moving towards, well, at this point, he's broken with the Catholic Church pretty much.

And he's very fearful that Zurich may not go with him. So he was wanting to take this gradualist approach because he well understood that many people in the city were Roman Catholic and they were not wanting to switch to being Protestant. So he felt we need to go slow here.

And also, it's at the same point that some of the more radical reformers up in Germany are going berserk. You know, you have these peasant rebellions breaking forth and that's scaring people. And as if that's not enough, you got the Turks are. On the advance in southeastern Europe, you know.

So there's just a period of great chaos that's going on here. And so this tended to make Zwingli want to pull back. But, you know, Grebel, Blayrock, and Felix Mounts, they are not wanting to back up one bit. They want to go for it. So at first, Zwingli tries to say, okay, well, you know, come, I think, Christmas or something, these changes that you're wanting, they'll be instituted.

Of course, Christmas comes by, and guess what? You know, it doesn't happen. And so they become much more antagonistic as a result of this. Here I'm pointing out all the problems that Zwingli is having. And so they come to believe that he's not fully reforming Zurich after the New Testament pattern.

They especially try to get Zwingli to continue child baptism now. And by the way, in these Bible studies, privately, Zwingli was saying, yeah, you know, you guys are right. Believers' baptism is the way we should go. Baptizing infants, that's really not biblical. And by the way, who can tell me the one obvious, well, it's not obscure, but the one passage that those that do infant baptism that they use as justification.

I think, isn't it in Acts with the Philippian jailer saying to baptize you and your household? Well, actually, you just gave me a second one. The, what is it, Cornelius? It says Cornelius and his whole household was baptized. And so they're just making the assumption that there must have been babies in the household, you see.

But nowhere is that stated. And you don't base a major doctrine upon a passage that doesn't even state what you're making your doctrine on, you know, but that's what the Catholic Church had done. And the Lutherans and even some of the early reformers, they continue with infant baptism.

So they're wanting to break with that. And of course, at this point, they're saying, well, we're not going to let our children be baptized, and this is going to upset the city magistrates. Now, the other thing, too, I want to get to is they're upset with Zwingli because he is allowing the civil authorities to make decisions on major matters of doctrine.

And guess what their problem with that is? They're not the only people. That's right, they're not the ones to decide doctrinal issues. But you see, the Lutherans are going to ultimately not lose, well, even Luther himself, that's what's going to go why the and and what happens, folks, is all over Europe, even with the Reformation.

You got these reformers, and doctrinally, at least initially, it is great stuff that they're doing, but then they turn around and they surrender their doctrinal authority to the state. And so, fast forward to today, you got some pastors of churches that these churches are state churches, especially Lutheran churches, places like Denmark, Switzerland, and they have pastors that are atheists, blatant atheists, and yet they can be pastors, you know, because it's a bureaucracy through the government and all this crazy stuff.

And so, anyway, way back then, they realized this is not going to work out good if you keep doing that. And no, we need to not allow politicians to decide matters of theology. And, of course, that's one of the big problems they have with what Zwingli is doing.

And so, anyway, now, so you have to say it was a difficult situation back in those days because the city fathers could vote for a city to be reformed or exactly. Yeah. So, it was a total of alliance and stuff like that. Yeah. And the funny thing about it is, too, initially, these guys who are later to become Anabaptists, and they are initially before they're actually what you could define as Anabaptists, they too were agreed.

To this debate with the city government, and they only really break when the city government goes against what they want them to do, you see. But in other words, I would say initially they too were wrong, but they saw their error as a result of this, so to speak.

But it was a real difficult situation. And remember, historically, throughout for a thousand years of Christianity, church and state had been wedded together. In fact, in Eastern Orthodoxy, they don't have a pope, they have a patriarch, but really the head of the church in the Eastern Roman Empire was the emperor, is what they call Caesaropapism.

Ultimately, the head of state is the head of the church. And we know that some of the Eastern Byzantine emperors are some of the most corrupt people that ever walked the planet, and yet they're head of the church. So it's a big, big problem. All right. Well, you have, and you also have these other Anabaptists, or Anabaptism is going to start popping up all over the place.

And some of the first Anabaptists had some very different ideas. Anabaptism, you know, the big unities were adult baptism, priesthood of the believer, but everything else could go all kinds of wild directions, and some of them did. So anyway, for Martin Busser, who's another big Reformation figure, you know, when Anabaptists come to his city, he has them kicked out.

As well. Other places, they're going to start drowning them. Alright, now Grebel, Matz, and others made several attempts to plead their position. They carefully prepared their positions to bring it to the council. See, at this point, they're trying to go through the city council too. They had this public disputation with Zwingli over this issue of baptism.

And basically, the city council sides with Zwingli. Because, from their view, I'm sure Zwingli was the more conservative view and was safer to them. And after this final rebuff by the city council, January 18th, they're ordered to desist from arguing and submit to the decision of the council, and they're to bring their children forth to be baptized within eight days.

The government thus became the enforcing arm of Zwingli's position of infant baptism, which we all know privately Zwingli himself didn't believe in. Okay, but for political reasons, he's saying that's what we need to do. All right, now they, of course, are calling themselves the Brethren now. They gather at the home of Felix Mantz and his mother.

On the 21st of January, Conrad Grebel baptizes George Blayrock. Then he baptizes all of them in turn. And this is the beginning of Anabaptism. All right. And by the way, they did not yet do full immersion. One of the first recorded actual full immersions is later on after Grebel's been kicked out.

And he's going all over the place preaching. And oh my gosh, on one occasion, in one town, they baptized 500 people. Almost sounds like the book of Acts. You know, they were incredible preachers, these Anabaptists. But one guy was so excited and so desiring to be baptized, is in either January or February in Germany.

So what is it? It is icy coal. And the closest water was a Rhine River. And it's kind of humorous if you read the document because the guy shows up and he is going to be baptized in his birthday suit in the Rhine River. And I feel sorry for Conrad Grebel.

You know, it's been a very cold baptism. Of course, you know, Clyde talks about when he was at Masawi, Japan, he helped to found a church that's still going in Maasaui. You look at the website of the church there in Masawi, and Clyde Wilton is prominently a little bio of him.

Church is still going. They flew him back for their, I forget whatever year anniversary, a number of years ago. But he said they're doing a baptism there, and it was winter time, and it's freezing, and they have these outdoor things. And Clyde talked to us and said, isn't this going to be pretty cold?

Oh, we're going to warm it up. He says, they go in there, you know, they got this huge pool, they get one little pitcher of hot water, threw it in there, and now we're ready. Okay, so anyway, but initially, they were doing the sprinkling just like everyone else was, and it's the only layer they go to full immersion.

But so, and of course, this really gets things going when they re-baptize each other. That is very controversial, very touchy thing to do. Now, the first Anabaptist martyr is going to be Felix Matz. Let me just say, I'm leaving out a ton of stuff here. After they baptize each other, they fan out all across Switzerland, go up into Germany, and they're just itinerant preaching.

In fact, one of them was arrested for corner preaching, they called it. And they got in all kinds of trouble, but they had all these incredible successes. And these little Anabaptist congregations start popping up all over Europe, you know. But eventually, they get caught, they're going to be brought back to Zurich.

On one occasion, by the way, they get caught, they're put in prison, and is in this big tower room. And look way up there, and there's an open window. And they had tied them up when they brought them in the room, and you know, rope tied to each one of them in one long rope.

And they decided, hmm, you know, we'll just get out. And they escaped, you know. And they start preaching again. And it just, you know, they wouldn't, you know, they'd be caught several times, they'd be beaten, you know, just like in the book of Acts, and they would just keep on preaching.

And but Felix Mons is going to be brought back, condemned, and what they did is they take him down to the Lamatte River and crystal clear water, just crystal clear water. And they tie him up and they dump him out of the boat and to drown him. And that's going to be one of the favorite methods of getting rid of the Anabaptists.

And it's kind of a double insult. You know, you want to be baptized, you want to be re-baptized, we'll re-baptize you, we'll drown you, okay? And other times they burn him at the stake. All right, so, and he's, he's, there's some controversy where he's the first martyr or not, but at least among this group, he certainly is.

And it's kind of sad that, you know, Zwingli stands aside and lets all this happen. You know, and these were former close friends. All right, Mance, by the way, had been, you know, he was, by the way, Felix Mons was also the son of a priest. And in fact, he was one of the priests working there at the Grossmunster Church, had gone to school there and everything.

All right, so to give long instructions. Short of it with Conrad Grebel, he will continue to preach. He never is caught and executed. What happens with him, though, is he eventually is going to catch the plague, which was quite common back then, and he died of the plague.

He had his wife, you know, she's left a widow, had three little children. It must have been incredibly tough on her because he was gone all the time. On one occasion, he slips in, and after a few days, and he's packing up to leave again, and she ran out of the house, you know, trying to find his dad to stop him from leaving.

And it's just, it must have been a real, you know, real life was going on while they're doing these things. And it must have been very, very tough. You know, she will return to the Reformed Church after Grebel dies. And many, many, many years later, one of her great, great, great, great grandsons, or Grebel's grandsons, will become pastor of the Grossmunster Church again.

You know, so Grebel family is still there. All right. And this Wellenberg prison, one of the times when I believe that's where Grebel and the three were held at one time, that was the castle that Grebel used to live in when he was a little boy, when his father had a job there.

That's been quite interesting for him. The castle users run around the corridors as a little kid, and then he's put in the jail, you know, below the castle. So, and I forget how they got out of that one, but anyway. All right, so you got Felix Monts's first casualty, and they then flee again.

Oh, he said that when he dice is into thy hands, oh God, I commend my spirit. And his mother was there encouraging him as he was going to be martyred. Then they seize all their properties, you know, which I don't know what happened to the mother as a result of that.

All right, but that was, they were making an example of him. Blavrock, amazingly, what they did with Blaird, they just stripped him down to his waist, took rods, and beat the daylights out of him to the gates of the city. And then they told him, Okay, now swear you will not come back.

And Blairock says, I can't swear. That's another thing. You know, a lot of the Anabaptists didn't believe in making public oaths, swear, you know, took that passage very literally from the Bible. And he says, I can affirm. And so ultimately, what happened was he took off his shoe, you know, shake the dust off your feet, so to speak.

And he says, I will not come back, you know. And he took off and he doesn't come back. Okay, so anyway, that's the Lamatte River where this I understand some of the sons. Y'all were there, what, two years ago, and this very, very spot. And that's where the first Anabaptist is going to be drowned.

All right, right there in Zurich. Now, so we get all through this. He then goes to burn Bill Grissom's. I can't pronounce that. And then he leaves Switzerland for good and he goes into Tyrol, which is today part of Austria. And beginning in 1529, after the former pastor there, this little Anabaptist church that was burned at the stake, Blavrock becomes the pastor there.

And he's very successful as a pastor there. Many believers were baptized, and then they founded churches all over the place, that being sort of the mother church. And then he and another pastor there, Hans, are arrested by the Innsbruck Catholics, Catholic authorities there at Innsbruck. And so, and there, they're all going to be tortured.

They're trying to get names of other Anabaptists from them. And then they burned them at the stake. Grebel died one year after Mons's death. He preached everywhere he went, also suffered imprisonment, managed to escape, and he died after contracting the plague. Okay, so that's the initial beginnings of the Anabaptists.

But that is certainly not the end. And so, small groups of Anabaptists crop up now all over Western Central Europe. They tend to be poor people, often from the peasant class, quite a few of them. And although some of their leaders are well educated, many were peasants, humble circumstances.

And the other thing about the Anabaptists is since so many of them were humble circumstances, a lot of them were illiterate, there's not much that we have of them written by them. Of course, a lot of their writings were destroyed. And so, most of what we have to go on with the early Anabaptist movement is written about them by guess who?

Their enemies. And that's another reason why they suffered constantly with this reputation. So, but by this point in time, the big three, I guess, they support adult baptism, they reject infant baptism, they believe in believers' baptism. True baptism required a public confession of both sin and faith, which could only be accomplished by a person who reached what some call the age of accountability.

And Anabaptists also argued for a separation of church and state, and they had a very strong notion of this idea of priesthood of the believer. And this affected this idea of freedom of conscience, okay, big time. Now, they appear to begin in Zurich, Switzerland. They spread. A lot of them fled to Moravia, where they were treated a little bit better throughout Germany.

And then oftentimes, they'd have a period of peace, then persecution would come, and they'd spread and scatter again. And they're, of course, opposed by everyone else, basically. Now, in northern Germany and the Netherlands, some of the Anabaptists that we're more familiar with get their beginnings under the leadership of Menno Simmons.

And Menno Simmons is where we get the name Mennonites, right? And this group will later become the Mennonites, the Amish, and Hutterites, or three of the big groups. And we're going to see, though, that these Anabaptists are somewhat different from, well, we're Southern Baptists. And, you know, Southern Baptists are the largest single Protestant denomination in the United States.

But we're not the only Baptists. In fact, I think last time I counted, there's 75 varieties of Baptists. Okay, so even today is quite a diversity. But what we are probably, when it gets back to me again, we're going to take a brief look. At how the English Baptists got started and why there's a little differentiation between the original Anabaptists and the English Baptists.

And just to give you a little heads up, basically, the English Baptists, I would argue, returned to their roots. The English Baptists are going to be a lot more similar to what Conrad Grebel, Felix Bailock were teaching, and they're still very strongly affected by Reformed theology. And so we'll get to that next time, but I think we're out of time at this point.

So.