Lord, we are so thankful for the privilege we had today of, in a very fresh way, beholding You. And, Lord, we are always touched that no matter how many times in the past, every day we behold You, when we come into Your presence and look upon You, Lord, we get another glimpse of the height, the depth, the length, the breadth of Who You are. And we worship You for that, Lord.
And, Lord, we are thankful, too, that as we come to Your Word, as we look throughout history, we can also see You. Because, Lord, it is Your story. It is the way that You have been moving through Your saints throughout the centuries. As we always pray, we are not here just to learn facts, but we want to see You. We want to behold the Lamb of God moving against the great force that would try to destroy the testimony of Jesus.
We are thankful, Lord, for Your faithfulness, for faithful saints who have withheld and upheld Your testimony throughout these years. And we would desire that they would be an encouragement to us in these days. In Jesus’ name, amen.
As we continue in this series, obviously, because of time, I do not take time to go back and review. We would spend the whole time reviewing, and even the purpose of the series and the history of it and everything—it is all on YouTube, so you can go back and see it if you have any questions.
But the heart of what we are looking at here is really the testimony of Jesus. And when we speak of the testimony of Jesus in a simplistic way, we are just speaking of His life being expressed through His saints—His life being seen, Him being seen as the all-sufficient One, He being seen as the all in all. His life being seen and lived out through brothers and sisters.
That is what He has desired throughout the ages. And that is what He is desiring of us today: that His very character and nature, as it is formed within His people, as that great transforming work is done, that the life of Christ would be seen. Even though we are looking at people, we are looking beyond. We are looking at His life in them. And that is the encouragement that we have.
As we start today, there was a verse in Ecclesiastes that caught my heart. Ecclesiastes 3:14 says:
I know that everything God does will remain forever;
There is nothing to add to it,
And there is nothing to take from it,
For God has so worked that men should fear Him.
And that encouraged me so much because, as you see throughout history, we see ones like last time with the Reformation. They gained some ground. They saw some truths. They beheld the Lord in a fresh way, but they also fell short. But praise God, the ground they gained, the material that they had, went into that eternal city. The gold went into the city. Or another phrase you could say: the Bride was making herself ready.
Every time God is able to work and move, that is an eternal work. God’s work is eternal. And when He does it, it stays in eternity, and it stays in that city, and nothing can take away from it. Praise God for that.
We will also see, as we continue on, that the recovery work God is doing is progressive. As one sees something, another sees something else. It is progressive, but it is always upon the same foundation: Christ and Him crucified. This is the foundation upon which every work of God is built.
There was a beautiful example of this in the Old Testament—the materials that went into the temple. In 1 Chronicles 26:26-27, it says:
This Shelomoth and his relatives had charge of all the treasures of the dedicated gifts which King David, the heads of the fathers’ households, the commanders of thousands and hundreds, and commanders of the army had dedicated.
They dedicated part of the spoil won in battles to repair the house of the Lord.
Praise God, all of these dear ones, they were adding things, and it was going into the house of the Lord. But then that little section does not end right there. There is another verse. It continues in 1 Chronicles 26:28:
All that Samuel the seer had dedicated, and Saul the son of Kish, Abner the son of Ner, Joab the son of Zeruiah—everyone who had dedicated anything—all of this was in the care of Shelomoth and his relatives.
Now, this can strike you as strange all of a sudden, because we can think of all that David did going into the house, and all of his fathers and all of David’s men. But all of a sudden it is talking about the work that Saul did going into the house.
We generally do not think of Saul as a great spiritual man, but the little bit that Saul did, where he did work for the Lord, that went into the temple. The bit that Abner did—Abner was Saul’s commander in chief, eventually went over to David, and Joab killed him—but that work that he did went into the house.
Joab—I mean, sometimes he is for David, sometimes he is against David. He is just such a character there. But that work that he did went into the house, the material for the house.
And to me, that was a warning in my heart. Sometimes I can judge what is going into the house: “What that person is doing, that is not going to go into the house.” And it really convicted my heart that we do not see as the Lord sees. He sees one’s heart. He sees the work that is done.
As we look around Christianity today, we need to be careful about not judging what is going into the eternal house of God, because the ones that we might not suspect would be adding material to the house. God sees in a different way. He sees the hearts.
And so I took these verses as a warning and also an encouragement: everything He does through any of us. It says at the end of verse 28, “Everyone who had dedicated anything.” Praise God for that all-inclusive thing. Sometimes we can think, “What worth am I? What am I doing?” Praise God, every little bit that He is working in each one of our lives is going into that city. It is going into that process of that Bride being made ready.
Now, last time we looked at the impact of the Reformation. We are thankful how, through the Reformation, the authority of the Word of God was recovered. And when we are speaking of the Word of God, we are speaking of the living Word of God. We are not just talking about a mental apprehension, but the Word of God captured lives and changed lives.
There was the recovery of the truth of justification by faith, and also the believer’s direct access to God instead of having to go through a priest or an intermediary. But also we saw that there were great shortcomings too. They saw the priesthood of all believers, but they did not practice it. They did not enter into it. And they continued to believe and practice, in a very strong way, infant baptism.
They also formalized the worship plans for Sunday. A couple people afterwards asked me about that. This is Calvin’s worship plan, back in the 1500s:
Some things have not changed in a few hundred years. But that was the pattern. That was the way they set it up. And you see how, once man sets something up, it can just stay in place. You might tweak it a little bit here or there. Calvin liked to sing psalms; others liked to sing hymns. So there are variations.
Also, we saw how the Protestants ended up allying themselves with kings and princes, and there became state and national churches. I was talking with Jenny’s husband, Jarl, the other night. When he was born, he was born into the Lutheran Church in Norway. If you are born in Germany, you are born into that Lutheran church. Thank God, we are born again into the church. That was one of the downfalls.
Eventually, we will see today how the persecuted became the persecutors.
Now, as we look at this period of time right after the Reformation—the post-Reformation period of the sixteenth century—we want to look first at a couple of things to set the scene. These are the religious wars going on in Europe and the Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation.
It is sad that during this time, many religious wars were going on throughout Europe, starting from the Peasants’ Revolt. We touched last time on the Kappel Wars, where Zwingli was killed. That was between the Catholics and the Protestants in Switzerland.
Then there was the Schmalkaldic War in Germany, again between Protestants and the Holy Roman Empire. The Protestants were defeated, but Lutherans became legalized. At the end of this war, a precedent was set down that everybody recognized: cuius regio, eius religio. It means, “Whose realm, his religion.”
If you are ruling, if it is your realm, you set the religion. They all agreed to that. They said if the king says we are going to be Catholic, we are going to be a Catholic church. If the king says we are going to be Protestant, we are going to be Protestant. They are not going to be fighting about it. That is the way it was set. It is not a great thing, but it brought peace.
Then we had the Dutch Revolt. There was actually something called the Netherlands back at that time, and to settle the fight, the Protestants got Holland and the Catholics got Belgium. That is why we see Holland today as more of a Protestant country while Belgium still remains Catholic.
The significant war that kind of ended this period was the Thirty Years’ War. It ended with what is called the Peace of Westphalia. During this time, the Holy Roman Empire lost a significant amount of its power. It was never as powerful after this. The boundaries within the countries of Europe were more or less set, kind of what they are today through the wars.
There have been some little bickerings and changes, but in general the boundaries were set. Since much of the battle occurred in Germany, it was really devastated during that time. Germany was almost bankrupted because of the long period of war.
In the end, generally there was freedom of religion for Protestants and Catholics. Protestants were free to worship; Catholics were free to worship. But anybody outside of those two realms—if you were not in the Lutheran Church or the Calvinistic Church, the Reformed Church—if you were something else, you did not have the freedom to worship.
Because of this, the Jesuits, who were of the Catholic Church, were excluded from Protestant lands. So that is just the general framework of what we are looking at today. There were these battles going back and forth, and it was not a very settled society in this period of time.
Also, after the Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church had what they called a Counter-Reformation. They saw that people were leaving, so they said, “We have got to do something.” It generally ran from the Council of Trent to the end of the Thirty Years’ War, and it had a threefold purpose.
First, they wanted to enhance spiritual life within the Roman Catholic Church and eliminate abuses. That is what the Council of Trent did. They eliminated some abuses, but they did not change any of their teachings. They tried to clean up things like the abuse of indulgences and some other matters, but they did not really change their teachings.
During this time of trying to renew spiritual life within, more and more individuals—generally called mystics—started to come forth. We have individuals such as St. John of the Cross. I do not know if anybody has ever read his book, The Dark Night of the Soul. There was St. Teresa and St. Francis de Sales.
We see these ones coming forth within the church, and they saw they could not really change the whole church, but they themselves could live a private spiritual Christian life with the Lord. Some came out; some stayed in.
The second goal was to stop the spread of Protestantism and win ones back to the Roman Catholic Church. This was not done by voluntary coming back. This was done by force. This was when Ignatius of Loyola founded the Society of Jesus, better known as the Jesuits. They could use any means they wanted to bring people back into the Roman Catholic Church at that time, and that created a lot of conflicts and battles.
The third purpose was to continue to spread the faith to other areas. Like a good marketing plan, they saw that in their little area they had pretty much covered most of Europe, and they said, “We need to expand our market throughout the rest of the world.”
So they headed out to Asia and the Americas. Matteo Ricci went to China; Francis Xavier went to India, Southeast Asia, and Japan; and Franciscan missionaries came over to New Spain. Now, for the history buffs, New Spain at that point in time was Mexico, the Southwest United States, Louisiana, and Florida. That was all Spanish territory at that time.
Was the Counter-Reformation successful? It all depends on your perspective. From the Catholic Church’s perspective, they thought it was very successful. They expanded their base. They so-called cleaned things up.
I do not want to be too disrespectful, but it was like they washed the pig. You farmers will know what I mean. They put lipstick on the pig, but it was still the pig.
They might have stopped the spread of Protestantism in Europe, but they did not stop the spread of the testimony of Jesus. And that is the key thing. From their perspective, it may have been successful. From a general spiritual perception, I do not think it was successful at all.
Now let us move on to the positive side here: the Radical Reformation. This was a name given by historians to ones who were so radical that they would leave the established church.
The first group we have is the Anabaptists. They saw that the Reformers had not gone far enough. They rejected church-state alliances, rejected infant baptism, and believed the church was only made up of those who were born again. To us, that sounds pretty normal, but that was a very dramatic statement at that point in time.
They only called themselves Christians. You will find that most of these groups get a name put on them by somebody else. These ones just called themselves Christians. They ended up being persecuted both by Catholics and Protestants.
Anabaptist just means “to rebaptize” or “baptize again.” They were given that name because they believed only in believers’ baptism. At that point in time, everybody believed in infant baptism. From the world’s point of view, if you were a believer and got baptized, you were baptized again—rebaptized.
They also had a contention with the Reformers on this matter of the relationship between church and state. The original Anabaptists started in Switzerland, and many of them were students of Zwingli. They had Bible studies together, prayed together, and had great fellowship together. Zwingli was actually the one who encouraged them in the Lord and encouraged much of their spiritual growth.
These ones included Conrad Grebel, George Blaurock, Felix Manz, and others you will hear about. They were students of Zwingli. But as they got into the Word more and more, they started coming into conflict with Zwingli and some of the other Reformers, because Zwingli believed in infant baptism and in the church-state relationship. They saw in the Scriptures that this was not so.
So they separated from Zwingli. At this point they did not have to meet totally secretly, but they had to meet discreetly. They had to be a little more careful about how they met.
One evening in 1525, a group of them was meeting for a time of prayer. They were humbling themselves before the Lord in prayer in a great way. The Spirit of the Lord came upon George Blaurock, and he felt convicted. He said, “I need to be baptized.” As they studied the Scriptures, he said, “I want to be baptized.” He looked to Grebel and said, “Will you baptize me?”
In the past, only the pastors and officials could baptize, but neither one of these men was one of those. So we are actually starting to see the priesthood of all believers, the functioning of every brother and sister.
Grebel baptized Blaurock. In the end, Blaurock baptized Grebel and a few others in the room. They all got baptized. They were sprinkled at that point in time. The battle was not between sprinkling and dunking. The battle was between infant baptism and believers’ baptism.
We fight so much about sprinkling or dunking. But this was infant baptism versus real baptism of believers. That was the key issue that this was all starting about. It began to spread throughout Zurich and Switzerland, having an impact.
The city council passed a law and said all children must be baptized. If a child was not baptized, the parents were going to be killed. That kind of drew the line. That is why they started having to meet more and more in secret.
Later that year, Eberli Bolt, the first Anabaptist martyr, was burned at the stake by the Roman Catholic Church. He was caught preaching in the Catholic part of Switzerland, and he was executed immediately.
The city council in Zurich saw that, even though they were making these laws, people were continuing to go forth. So they decreed that anybody who was rebaptized, in their mind, would be drowned. They started drowning ones in the river and lake there in Zurich.
Tragically, Grebel, who was very close to Zwingli and very influential, died of the plague. But Felix Manz carried it on with such zeal that he was arrested and drowned. Felix Manz is the first martyr by the Protestants. So you have the first martyr by the Catholics and the first martyr by the Protestants. Both were starting to persecute this dear group.
The theory of the Zurich prosecutors was that punishment for the second baptism was a third baptism: drowning. They would bind a person’s hands to his knees, put a stick between the arms and legs, and throw him into the waters of the Limmat River there in Zurich.
Felix Manz’s last words were, “Into Thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.”
If you ever want to read Foxe’s Book of Martyrs or Martyrs Mirror, there are tremendous stories and testimonies in there. When ones were dying and being persecuted, what they would share at the end was so powerful that it strengthened the saints, and many even came to the Lord through their persecutions.
So they devised this thing called a tongue screw. They basically screwed the person’s tongue down so that he could not say anything while he was being killed. Other times they would just kill people in secret. They saw the power of the testimony of ones dying, and they had to try to quench that.
They could quench that, but they could not quench the Spirit of God. And it kept moving. Praise God.
The Lord then raised up Michael Sattler. He was saved, forced to leave where he was living, and served throughout Germany and Switzerland. After this persecution, they had to start meeting more secretly, maybe in the mountains, in the woods, or in caves. They had to be very careful how they met.
In 1527, they wanted to come together for a time of fellowship because they had not ever really come together and said, “Who are we, and why do we gather?” So they held a conference in the town of Schleitheim to determine the nature of their faith.
Michael Sattler drafted what is generically called the Schleitheim Confession, but what they called it was The Brotherly Union of Some Children of God. I love that little title: a brotherly union of some children of God. That is all they were.
This is what they believed:
That was their testimony. Most of the time, as you read about their gatherings, prayer meetings, and times at the Lord’s table, I think most of us would feel very comfortable there. The spirit of it would be very similar. We have the freedom to gather; they did not have that freedom. But they were gathering on the same principle.
After that conference, it was discovered by the authorities. Sattler was tortured publicly, pretty humiliatingly, and ended up being burned at the stake. His wife was told to recant. They gave her eight days to recant, and she would not. So she was drowned. Someone took their children.
Later on, Blaurock was caught and burned at the stake. After Blaurock was caught, Jacob Hutter took up Blaurock’s assembly, and they fled to Moravia. Eventually they had to move to Slovakia. The Hutterites are still in existence today. After further persecution, the Hutterites moved into Ukraine, and when Russia took over Ukraine, they fled to the United States.
The tremendous slaughter and persecution continued in a terrible way. One of the ones who was killed has a precious testimony: Dirk Willems. Many people have heard of Dirk.
Dirk Willems was a prisoner. He had been held in prison for a couple of years, and finally he escaped. One of the prison guards was chasing him. There was a big lake next to the prison, and it was wintertime. Dirk started running across the lake.
The story is that he had been in prison so long that he did not weigh very much. Maybe he was a small guy. The ice was not that thick, but he was able to make it. The guard, who was still eating well, started chasing him, fell into the lake, and started drowning.
Dirk stopped, went back, and saved the guard. He took him back to land. They rearrested him. The guard actually pleaded for his life: “Please, just leave him in prison.” They said no, and Dirk was executed about a week or two later.
The person chasing you is in trouble, and you turn around, go back, and save him. That is a testimony of Jesus. That is the life of Christ. He loved not his own life, literally unto death. He knew what would happen when he went back. That has always touched me in a very precious way.
Sadly, as Anabaptists continued to grow and spread out, a group of them settled in the city of Münster. They set up Münster and said, “This is the New Jerusalem.” They said that they were all prophets.
At first, for a little bit, everything worked great. It was like a New Jerusalem. It was paradise, and they were providing everything. But power corrupts. Power corrupts.
Pretty soon, these false prophets saw what they had, and they started taking advantage of the city. According to their prophecy, if they wanted someone else’s wife, they had the authority to annul a marriage and take that woman. They would take the money. If they liked your house, they could take your house.
It turned into immorality, debauchery, and abuses. It was tragic. Finally, the Catholics surrounded the city and destroyed it.
What happened there put a stain on the testimony at that point in time. As ones were trying to share the gospel, the other side would always say, “Just think about Münster. Look at those people you are talking about—Münster.”
It is like today, when somebody who is perhaps a famous leader in the United States or in any of the churches is caught in immorality, it stains all of us. The enemy can use that. The enemy successfully used the Münster thing to thwart, for a period of time, the spread of the gospel. It was tragic how they self-destructed there at Münster.
But praise God, the Lord raised up one called Menno Simons. He was saved in the Netherlands. He had been part of the Catholic Church there, but he was saved and left. He started traveling throughout Germany and Switzerland, really trying to restore and bring ones back to the Lord.
Even many believers, because of what had happened at Münster, were deceived and discouraged. They said, “How can something like this happen? We are all following the Lord.” But Menno Simons was able to bring them back together in unity, encourage them, and strengthen them in the Lord to continue pressing on.
Because of his success, he had to flee Germany and hide out many times throughout Switzerland and other places because the death sentence was on his head. As a result, he lived out a full life and died a natural death in 1559. He was really able to strengthen the ones there.
With each of these groups, I am going to try to show our connection here in the United States. In 1663, the first Mennonites came to the United States and settled in Pennsylvania. They did not call themselves Mennonites; people called them Mennonites.
Then, in 1683, the Mennonites and Quakers established a place called Germantown, Pennsylvania, at William Penn’s invitation. Next time we will look at the Quakers. William Penn was a Quaker. He came over and had a land grant. He was given the state of Pennsylvania because the king of England at that point was indebted to Penn’s father. To pay off a debt, he gave Penn Pennsylvania.
Penn set it up as a refuge for saints. We will see many go into that area.
There is a gap between 1543 and 1683. One of the strange things is that, as the religious wars were going on between Protestants and Catholics, a little relief was given to the Anabaptists and other believers. The Protestants and Catholics were so occupied with fighting each other that they put this aside for a while.
But after that was settled, persecution picked back up and was pretty intense. During the persecution, which had continued for many years, some believers would deny the faith or go back to the Protestant church. Then, once the persecution stopped, they would come back, recommit themselves to the Lord, leave the Protestant church, and start meeting with the Mennonites again.
If persecution started again, they would go back to the safe place of the Protestant church. Jacob Ammann challenged the ones returning. He said, “No, if you leave and deny the Lord, you are being shunned, and you cannot come back.” The word shunned was invented.
The Mennonites were more gracious. They said, “No, if ones genuinely repent and come back, we need to accept them.” This was the basis for the separation between the Mennonites and the Amish. It was over ones who had denied the Lord or left and gone back into a Protestant church for a period of time.
How do you accept believers back after the persecution stops and they genuinely want to return? The Mennonites accepted them; the Amish said no. That was kind of the first big division among the Anabaptists.
Any division is tragic, because in any problem situation like that, or any challenge we face, there is a way in the Lord through it. At that point in time, I do not know what the way would have been, but I know the Lord had a way for them. They chose not to find His way, but came up with their own way.
To me, the testimony of Jesus at that point becomes weaker and weaker through these various ones because of division.
Thank the Lord, the Anabaptists returned to the simplicity of Christ. They loved not their lives unto death, and they believed in the priesthood of all believers. We are very thankful for that.
As we are familiar with the Mennonites and the Amish, the Mennonites came over in 1663, and the Amish came over here in about 1730. If you look back at the original ones before this split under Menno Simons, they did not have a particular dress code. They just dressed simply.
They were not going to be in fashion, and they were not going to be out of fashion. They were just simple dressers. They were not trying to draw attention to themselves, but they did not have a strict dress code. They lived that simple life, but they were in the world and not of the world. They were merchants. They were not separated in little towns and clusters, but they were there as a testimony.
Sadly, after some generations, the inward reality started fading away. They started complying more with an outward form, setting up rules and regulations. It is sad how we can start in a certain way with so much life.
What was so convicting to the first generation—to dress simply because they wanted to show they were not of the world—eventually became, “If you want to be spiritual, this is how you dress. If you want to be spiritual, this is what you do.”
Whenever we start focusing more on the outward than the inward, we are in trouble. Tragically, we see how ones have ended up.
Now, when I am making general statements, I am not saying that I know everybody in the Mennonite or Amish people. There may be believers there, and that is fine. I do not know. I am not trying to condemn everybody. I know there are believers in the Roman Catholic Church, Protestant churches, and all these churches. I am just trying to point out some things without condemning things.
Now, if we move over to France and the Huguenots, the Huguenots were originally called Gospelers. Later they were called Huguenots. Naturally, nobody knows where this term came from. If somebody says, “I know where it came from,” they do not. There are three or four main theories, but nothing for certain.
Calvinism and Calvin’s work spread throughout France, and thousands were saved. In 1559, they had their first synod, or conference, together in Paris.
Catherine de’ Medici was the queen and the powerhouse mother at that time. She tolerated them for political gain because the Huguenots, in general, were the economy of the country. They were the merchants, craftsmen, and winemakers. The economy of the country was centered around them and really built upon them. There were also some among the nobility who were Huguenots.
She saw the benefit of having them on her side, so she tolerated them. But sadly, that did not last too long. One of her generals had a massacre at Vassy, and that began the religious wars.
One of the weaknesses of the Huguenots was that they signed a manifesto to take up and use arms. So they were not always the victims. Sometimes they were the aggressors. They would go into Catholic areas and do to the Catholics what the Catholics were doing to them. This is not one of the highlights or high points of the Huguenots.
Their meetings were very simple, like ours also. They would have the table, breaking of bread, worship, a sermon, prayer meetings, and Bible studies in various homes. They started having to meet more and more in private.
They were under a lot of persecution. To me, it was sad that they started to take up arms. In 1562, some of them started to leave France. You will see several times throughout the history of the Huguenots that ones were getting out of France because of the persecution.
It is estimated that over 300,000 Huguenots left France. That is a large number for a population back in that day and time.
The first Huguenot colony in the United States was settled in Florida in 1562. Tragically, in 1565 they were all massacred by Spanish people. Remember that Florida at that point was New Spain, and the Spaniards did not want anybody from France coming in. They reclaimed that ground for themselves.
Another area where the Huguenots made a mistake was a wedding between Henry, the Huguenot leader, and Margaret, daughter of Catherine de’ Medici. There was hope for peace. They thought if these two sides could marry, like if the Hatfields and McCoys could marry together, everything would work out peacefully.
But tragically, there was a great betrayal about a week later. They were tricked into this whole situation, and they had the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.
This was where over 100,000 people were killed throughout France. It is called the greatest and darkest crime of the Christian era. The French Catholics and unbelievers were free to slaughter the Huguenots at that point.
If you read some of the details, they would kill them and throw them in the river. The river that runs through Paris, the Seine, actually turned red with the blood of the saints. All throughout Paris and France, for three days, this went on. It was tragic—the fierceness of the enemy.
More and more people continued to leave. Eventually, in 1585, Huguenots and all Protestants were expelled from France. What it meant was that the best and the brightest fled, and it had a devastating impact upon the economy of France.
Those who did not flee continued to meet privately and underground. Thank the Lord, there were ones who stayed. Many fled, but there were ones who stayed. Through that time, the testimony among them continued to grow and be strong, and more and more were coming to the Lord.
In 1598, they had the Edict of Nantes, which restored religious freedom. So the persecution stopped for a while.
In 1620, the first Huguenots came to Virginia around the York County area. Who knows where Elizabeth City, Virginia, is? It used to be a place called Elizabeth City; it is now called Hampton. That was where they first settled, a little north of Hampton, right in that whole area.
The Huguenots came there to flee persecution and have religious freedom. They also set up establishments in New York, like New Rochelle and New Paltz.
When the first ones came over in these areas, they were genuine believers who were really seeking religious freedom and standing for the testimony. Eventually, as time went on, we see that fade away. They turned more into a system. But we are thankful for those first generation or so who had a zeal for the Lord.
Today, if we wanted to move from the United States to another country, there would be some difficulties, but it would not be that challenging. Things would get accommodated. But it is hard for us to picture somebody leaving everything at home in France and moving over here with absolutely nothing.
Thankfully, the government here gave people land and places to settle. But we are thankful these ones came.
Tragically, in 1685, Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes. At that point, the number that fled was up to about 400,000. This revocation also impacted the Waldensians.
Remember those Waldensians back in northern Italy and Switzerland who were trying to be faithful? They were still in the picture at this time. Many were living in Moravia now, but those in the southern part of France were persecuted again.
Those remaining in France, those faithful ones, were called the Church of the Desert. In southern France today there is a little museum, a little house, concerning the history of the Church of the Desert. Elizabeth Schaefer visited and sent me some information and a picture.
It is a precious testimony that through all the persecution there were faithful ones still standing, gathering in the simplicity of Christ, interested that the testimony of Jesus would be preserved, and still sharing the gospel even though it could cost them their lives.
Later on, there was a settlement in Charleston, and the first Huguenots came to Manakin in 1700. Finally, in 1793, the French Revolution gave all liberty of conscience.
There is a little marker out on Huguenot Trail, Route 711. It says that the Huguenots were the largest single group of French Protestant refugees to come to Virginia. They settled near here at the site of the deserted Monacan Indian village in 1700.
The Virginia General Assembly established King William Parish, also known as the Huguenot Parish. The Huguenots established a church at this site, which is now known as the Manakin Episcopal Church. That is pretty close to us. That was an impact.
We are thankful, as we look at the Huguenots, for how they were faithful under persecution. But I think there are also a couple of warnings we can see from them.
They thought they were going to protect themselves by taking up arms, and it ended up being very destructive to them because they were wiped out. It also affected the testimony, because as they were sharing the gospel, people would say, “The Catholics kill us; you Huguenots kill too. What is the difference?” There was not a clear distinction. It muddied the whole testimony.
They also tried to make peace through compromise in the wedding and marriage. So often things will try to compromise and come in.
John mentioned the book of Ezra on Wednesday night at prayer meeting. When the remnant first returned from Babylon to build the house of God in Jerusalem, there were ones already settled there by the Assyrians. They said, “Come, let us build with you.” But they said, “No, we have no part in you.”
There are ones who want to infiltrate Christianity, assemblies, and various places. They want to so-called work together. We see a lot of ecumenical movements. But we do not have any part in that. It is either of Christ or it is not of Christ.
In this relative world today, everybody tries to blend things together. There is an absoluteness: we are either in Christ or we are not in Christ. We do not have anything to do with what is not in Christ other than to share the gospel with those ones, love them, and win them over to Him. But as far as working with them in this type of work, it cannot be done.
So we are thankful for the faithfulness of the Huguenots, and we can learn from each other’s mistakes also.
Now, as we come over to England, England is a little behind Europe at this point as far as the Reformation. As we talked about earlier, King John had already yielded to Pope Innocent III, and they became a Roman Catholic church.
In 1534, King Henry VIII separated from the Catholic Church. I sent out the slideshow last night, and I had a typo. I had King Henry VII. It was King Henry VIII.
He did not do it for religious reasons; he did it for political purposes. We are thankful that the Bible was finally published in English by Coverdale. Eventually, though, King Henry VIII outlawed the Bible and persecution started.
He arrested Archbishop Thomas Cranmer and one of the bishops, Hugh Latimer. They were in prison, and about 72,000 were martyred. It was a tragic time there.
Then, in 1547, Henry died, and King Edward VI abolished all anti-religion laws. Does anybody know the nickname of King Edward VI? The Pious. He was also called the British Josiah because he was a child when he took over.
Cranmer was really his godfather and the great influence. Edward abolished all the anti-religion laws, and because of that, numerous independent assemblies were established outside the Church of England.
It was a wonderful move. If we really wanted to start gathering together around the simplicity of Christ, you could do that. This was how all these independent assemblies were able to start in England: by the grace of God through the British Josiah, King Edward VI.
Sadly, Edward died, and Queen Mary, a staunch Catholic also known as Bloody Mary, took over. She was called Bloody Mary because of the number of people she killed and slaughtered.
Latimer and Ridley were burned at the stake together. As they were being burned, Latimer encouraged Ridley:
Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man.
We shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England,
As I trust shall never be put out.
They lit that candle with their lives—a candle that would never be put out. Praise God for that.
Later on under Mary’s reign, Cranmer finally gave in to her. She oppressed so much that he finally said, “Okay, I will surrender. I will go along with what you want.” But pretty soon after he did that, he came to his senses. He repented and recanted. He said, “No, I cannot do this. I am a believer in Christ.” Of course, he was martyred.
Fortunately, Mary died, and Queen Elizabeth came in and supported the Protestants, again for political gain. She established the Act of Uniformity, which required the use of the Book of Common Prayer and required all worship to follow the pattern of the state church.
They said, “This is the way it has to be.” Because of all those independent assemblies that had been created, a controversy was created between the Church of England and those independent assemblies, who cared more about Puritan values and such things.
What we will actually touch on next time is the rise of Puritanism. We are thankful that during that brief time of Edward VI’s reign, these assemblies were able to be established, and they stood up during the persecution.
Up to this time, if you look at the Church of England versus the Roman Catholic Church, there was not a lot of spiritual value there. But there were faithful ones like Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley, who planted the seeds for these independent assemblies to be formed and to carry on that testimony of Jesus.
Like Luther and Zwingli were used in Europe, Wycliffe and Cranmer and these ones lit the candle in England and were really able to carry on that testimony there.
We see how God, in His great grace, always has ones there—from influential ones like Archbishop Cranmer. It would have been very easy for him, with such a position in the church, just to hold on to his position. He would have been fine. But he said, “No, I cannot do this.”
These bishops were influential people who, in many ways, were secure in the world and had everything. But they said, “No, I am not going to live that way. I am going to live and end up dying for Christ.” How encouraging that was.
As we look at these faithful ones throughout the Anabaptists, Huguenots, and England, we are thankful for the faithful ones. We are thankful for the faithfulness of the Lord, that ones continued on.
The Reformers came so far. These others went a little bit further, recovering more and more of the reality of Christ. But now a picture is starting to evolve. We have three segments within overall Christendom:
These ones are outside of all of this. Their only desire is to live for the testimony of Jesus. But sadly, what we will see among these who seek the testimony of Jesus is that, after a generation or two, they start to lose their first love. They start to lose that life with the Lord. They start to lose that Spirit of the living God within them, that zeal.
They think they have it. They think, “This is it.” And then they turn into a system themselves. In the end, they become really no different than anything else.
But we will see God in His great faithfulness raise up others. Brothers and sisters, as we have said before, each one of us is invaluable to the Lord, but we are not indispensable.
We are invaluable. He died for each one of us, but we are not indispensable. If we will not cooperate, He will raise someone else up to carry on. That is what we saw. The Reformers were invaluable, but they only went so far. Others were raised up, and they went a little further. After these ones, others are raised up and carry forward.
There are warnings, exhortations, and encouragements in all of this for us to stay in that fresh, intimate relationship with the Lord. We always have to ask the question: Where are we? As we look at these pictures, where are we? Where are we in God’s economy?
Do we have that life? Do we have that spark that He is desiring? Are we being that testimony of Jesus that He is calling us to be? We know we are not shining as brightly as we could, but we are desiring to be that testimony in a fuller and greater way.
Where we are not, we are thankful that we have the Spirit of the living God to convict us, strengthen us, and enable us to press on, allowing Him to speak to us in a fresh way.
As we look back at this history, we see the great faithfulness of the Lord. We see faithfulness of man. We see the unfaithfulness of man. But we see God’s great love for His testimony, and that is what we want to be a part of.
Lord, we are thankful, as we always say, for Your great faithfulness and the love and mercy You show to us. Lord, as we give ourselves to You in a continual way, we know that You are the One Who sees clearly. We see in part; You see clearly. And we are desiring to press on.
Lord, as we give ourselves to You, we are thankful for the life within that allows us, by Your grace, to press on. But we also know that if there is any way that we are hindering You, any way that we are trying to do things of ourselves, then, Lord, as we give ourselves to You, in Your great love You discipline us.
In Your great love, You point things out. It is not to crush us, but to set us free. Lord, those things that hinder us are really the bondage that we find ourselves in.
We want to be those sons of God who are enjoying the glorious liberty that we have in Christ, and to be the people of God You are calling us to be. In Thy name we pray. Amen.