Lessons From the Martyrs' Mirror — Mose Stoltzfus

Hello, this is Brother Denny. Welcome to Charity Ministries. Our desire is that your life would be blessed and changed by this message. This message is not copyrighted and is not to be bought or sold.

You are welcome to make copies for your friends and neighbors. If you would like additional messages, please go to our website for a complete listing at www .charityministries .org. If you would like a catalog of other sermons, please call 1 -800 -227 -7902 or write to Charity Ministries, 400 West Main Street, Suite 1, AFPA, 17522.

These messages are offered to all without charge by the freewill offerings of God's people. A special thank you to all who support this ministry.

Greetings to all of you in Jesus' name. I, likewise, am glad to be here this morning. I've been greatly blessed in these past few evenings that I've been allowed to be here. I was away last weekend and only came home late Tuesday night, so I got in on a late start.

But we have been very blessed by the spirit and content and messages of these meetings. And you rejoice that something like that can take place in our time, and especially for such a need as this. Let's stand together for prayer, get a little change of position, and once again call upon God for his direction.

The Gospel, Church History, and the Martyrs' Mirror

Father in heaven, we want to thank you and bless you again for the opportunity that we have to preach the gospel, the truth, to look at the history of Christianity and the faith, the true faith that has been handed down through the ages.

We thank you for them, like the Hebrew writer says, that they without us, we need together to go into heaven together. The Christians of the past and also those of the present, that we be brethren and we speak basically the same truth and the same gospel.

Thank you, Father, for the Holy Spirit, and we pray that you truly give us the power of God which is not from ourselves to speak the things that need to be spoken. And that truth can prevail and our minds and hearts can be illuminated today with these things.

And thank you again, Lord, for touching the hearts of these people and bringing revival to Lancaster County in part. We know it is not near what we would like to see, but we are so thankful. Many big things have small beginnings, and we thank God for that.

We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. The title of my message this morning is Lessons from the Martyr's Mirror. I do thank the brethren for giving me that title. At first I thought that may be a little mundane for some of you, but as we notice the expressions Brother Melvin made on the ignorance of history, many times among the plain people we recognize that this is a subject that should not be mundane.

It brought a fresh and new appreciation for that piece of literature, which I believe to be a masterpiece of literature spanning virtually 1 ,670 years, or at least over 1 ,600 years of church history from the time of the apostles until about 1670, and giving a very accurate and detailed account of the defenseless Christians through the ages.

Written by Thielmann van Bracht in that time, in the late 1600s or mid -1600s when he wrote it, and it is known, as I mentioned before, as the history of the defenseless Christians through the centuries.

Now the reason I thank the brethren for that subject is because I had taken a course in that in Bible school when I was about 18 years of age at Carbon Hill Bible School in Ohio for six weeks, and that was a blessing.

But I have never, I don't believe since that, read so much as I did again in the last two weeks in my spare time to just get the heartbeat of the book and the accounts that are given there, which once again deeply, deeply influenced my life and challenged me.

And I was thankful for that. Now one of the reasons this is precious to me likewise is because our beginnings 25 years ago at Charity Christian Fellowship when we began there, actually I should say the Bible study that led up to the church, which was some months prior to that, three of us brethren, which were both, all three of us of Anabaptist background, got together and began a Bible study on a Saturday afternoon on the recovery of the Anabaptist vision.

Some of those tapes are still available today, taught by Brother Dale Heisey. And the reason that we chose that subject is because we recognized, well all three of us were descendants, direct descendants of the Anabaptists, and also because of where we were at in time and history.

We saw a tremendous departure from the truth that we had read and studied. A couple of us had studied quite extensively on Anabaptist history through the years prior to that, 1982. And in January when we sat together of that year, we thought it good to reminisce and to read and study that subject for what we hoped would be the beginning of a revival movement of which many in this tent have become, got to be a part of.

And also the fact of where we lived. We lived in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. And that was, at that time, I think according to one of the local historians here, a river brethren man, who had charted all of the Anabaptist type churches, and I believe there were at that time 17 different groups divided to such a degree that basically had nothing to do with each other, that would all have claimed a historical foundation in the Anabaptist church.

I think there are now 30 some, I think he's still living and still keeping that history up, and I believe there are now 30 some groups that basically have again so divided from the Dortrecht Confession of Faith, which had united them in 1632, that there is so much division in this county.

And so much animosity and shunning of one another is very, very serious, I would say at the least. A departure of faith and doctrine was one of the burdens of our heart. Now we recognize, we look around ourselves in this county, that there are fragments that have remained.

One of the major ones has been to still hold on to the not going to war, to being defenseless in the sense of non-resistance. We recognize that that has still held on to a number of groups, but nevertheless is eroding tremendously in the more liberal groups, and men are again enlisting in the army, taking up the machine gun and going out to fight, which is a sad, sad commentary of the Anabaptist heritage and movement here in Lancaster County.

But in general, we saw rather a great drift into worldliness and legalism. We often say that we warn young Christians who come out of our settings that there's a ditch on either side of the road. And it is very important that we understand that, because we have seen literally countless hundreds of people getting caught in one ditch or the other.

And we actually felt 25 years ago that we had a pronounced big ditch on one side and a big ditch on the other, and we were trying to revive somewhat of a true middle road, so to speak, between those two who again had the Bible as the sole scripture, meaning that it was the authority of the Word of God was again the principle which by we believed and lived.

We had, like I said, worldliness on one side or legalistic, dead, formal religion with little life or reality. And I also want to underscore that it is no way that I would like to lift up any book above the Word of God, but only as a history book I do recommend it very highly for you to get a hold of one and to sit down and read it extensively at times in order to understand the history of the Christian church through the ages.

And I believe this especially would help us to be in stark contrast today of the ease in which men are swallowed up by Protestantism and the charismatic movement, especially those who come out of Anabaptist background.

So we recommend the study of true historical Christianity in that sense. And we do this also in direct contrast of evangelical easy-believism that we have today and the empty emotionalism on the other side also in the Pentecostal and charismatic movements of our time.

A man by the name of Nicholas Stoltzfus out of Indiana wrote a book some years ago called Faith Worth Dying For, written on the basis of the Waldensians and a very interesting book, very challenging book to me, maybe again 35 years ago when he wrote that, was indeed a challenge to me and I will also be speaking some.

I would like to give a scope a little bit. The martyrs' mirror does bring in, like I said, beginning at the time of the apostles and showed the end of the twelve and how they died and where they died and how they were crucified, many of them upside down or burned in an oven or beheaded or put in exile.

John, incidentally, is the only one who died a natural death. And he was an old man and had suffered much, I believe, in loneliness in the Isle of Patmos where he got the revelation of Jesus Christ that we have before us or in the Bible.

And so all the rest of them died before their time in times of persecution. That rose up there in Jerusalem of which James and Stephen and some of them were the early ones, the first ones to be killed for their faith and that began a process of which, first of all, pagan Rome and the Jews killed a number of our brethren in the early church.

And then, of course, we have the great disappointment and catastrophe, I believe, of Constantine claiming conversion and bringing an end to pagan persecution. And a lot of people look back today and rejoice at that.

And I'm sure it was a great relief to the brethren temporarily. But that gave birth to the Holy Roman Catholic Church which then became a persecutor far worse than what the Roman pagans ever were and plunged this world into the dark ages of which the Anabaptist movement and the Valdentian movement came out of.

And I don't know if many of you realize that, but most good revival movements in history come out of dark ages. They come out of incredible darkness, religious darkness and spiritual darkness prior to it.

And we notice that especially with the Valdentians and the Anabaptists. And we notice it today in the revival among the old colony Mennonites, the Old Aramish, the Hutterites and other groups similar to that, that they are coming out of a couple of hundreds of years of incredible darkness and bondage and deception, religious deception.

And that is one of the great thrills about revival in our time. And it seems to mostly come out of those backgrounds. And also there's some of it in the acute apostasy among the evangelical world that has also produced a revival which we often talk about the remnant road or the remnant movement that has united with many of us Anabaptists and are finding common ground.

And that's a great joy likewise. Now, I would like to speak first of all a little bit on some of the... Maybe it was good that Brother Melvin didn't go into the Dortrech Confession of Faith because I do want to look a bit at some of the spiritual and doctrinal beliefs of many of these people in the martyr's mirror.

Persecution in the Teaching of Jesus and Hebrews 11

The first thing I would like to read some scripture in Hebrews chapter 11 and just give you a little bit of a synopsis of what the concept was in the Word of God concerning persecution. It started in the Sermon on the Mount or in the teachings of Jesus early on in his three and a half year old ministry when he began to warn the people as he sat them down and taught them that blessed are ye when men shall persecute you and say all manner of evil against you falsely for my name's sake.

We are blessed and our joy will be great if that's the case. And then he further taught the fact that men and women would have to be willing to deny themselves and take up the cross and follow the Lord Jesus.

And that would be a willingness to depart your houses and lands and husbands and wives and children and lands for my sake and the gospel. And so that was taught throughout his three and a half year ministry.

And then by example, he went the way before and suffered that terrible torment and reproach and persecution both physically, mentally and in every way and died on a cruel cross outside of Jerusalem. But in that time of his earthly ministry, he had told the people that the servant is not greater than his Lord.

That if they have done this to me, they're going to do it to you also. And he had laid out in clear tones throughout his preaching ministry there to the twelve and also to others that a time of persecution would definitely come.

You remember the time when they wanted to follow the Lord in such a way and sit on his right hand and sit on his left and all that and began to say that they were willing to follow him whatever he might have to go through.

And he had to tell Peter how that indeed that he would suffer likewise as he has suffered for his faith. And he kept trying to bring that point up. But in Hebrews chapter 11, we have the account of the Old Testament saints.

And in the account of the Old Testament saints, we have words like in verse 34, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to fight the armies of the aliens.

And there are some of that that belongs to the Old Covenant and the Old Testament and is not applicable to the New Testament church because they are defenseless Christians. But then he goes on in 35 and says, women received their dead raised to life again and others were tortured not accepting deliverance.

That became an earmark of the defenseless Christians that there were many times that the doors were open in the prison and individuals would not escape simply because they were so anxious and ready to die for their faith.

Because they believed, as it says here, that they might obtain a better resurrection. And then in verse 36 he describes what is coming in the New Testament church much more. Others had trials of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover, of bonds and imprisonment.

They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with a sword. They wondered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented, of whom the world was not worthy.

They wandered in deserts and in mountains and in dens and in caves of the earth. And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise, God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.

Defenseless Christianity and the Full Gospel

Now I would just like to say that I believe that many of the doctrines upheld by the Baldintians and the Anabaptists are very, very important doctrines of the faith. I do not believe that those who ignore them in evangelical Christianity today are giving a clear gospel, a full gospel.

If they do not believe, and it's interesting also to recognize that in the early days of Zwingli and Luther, they actually embraced defenseless Christianity for a short time. Until they looked around themselves and saw the reality of what they'd have to face and the public being willing to support them and protect them, they succumbed to that and therefore gave a partial gospel and to such a deterioration of their own faith that they turned out and became murderers and abusers of Christians and killed them likewise and burned them at the stake and various other things like that.

John Calvin himself, though revered by many evangelicals today, gave his full consent to the burning at the stake of Serratus or one of the men or brethren in Switzerland who was a defenseless Christian.

And therefore I do believe that great carefulness should be given today with any compromise that we should make with typical Protestant Christianity because it is preaching a partial gospel and needs to be, as I quote in Priscilla, taken aside and explained the way of God more perfectly.

It is not that none of those have not been born again and not made a beginning in their Christian life through ignorance. And we must understand that and not give them too cold a heart in rejection at the beginning because they may just have never heard like we had heard Brother Melvin say is also true of our Old Order people.

They have no idea what the Vorheit is. They don't understand the Dortrech Confession. They don't know what it taught. And I hear that many of our young plain girls in Lancaster County give an incredible answer when the tourists ask them why they have that thing on their head.

They don't have a clue that it's in 1 Corinthians chapter 11 taught in the Word of God. But the only answer they have is the church tells us to do it. And so I believe, yes, carefulness should be given because ignorance is ignorance.

And many times people need to be brought along to understand the full faith and the full understanding of the Scriptures. A faith worth dying for. And I was so impressed in reading that book by Nicholas Stolzer years ago as he described the Valdensians being their properties confiscated and because of their faith in Christ chased out of their houses and they took a trek across the Alps mountains in winter burying their little babies in the snow by the side of the road and suffering incredible tortures and discomforts in their flight to try to find somebody who would accept them and allow them to live in peace in their faith.

A faith worth dying for. And that mirrors the entire martyr's mirror from the beginning of the time of the apostles giving an account of each century. It is very, very important student reading for all young people that are born again and that have an early beginning in their Christian life, that they take that to heart and understand the faith that has come through the ages.

Now, like I say, and I've said this many times before in some of your presence, I also believe that it is the right thing for us to understand by interpretation of Scripture how the Scripture is interpreted to begin to view how the church through the ages interpreted the Scripture.

And therefore, if we follow the historical account of the defenseless Christians, we have a general view of how these Scriptures were understood in all of these, what is now, we can say for us, 1900 years of Christianity.

It is a good understanding of that. Alright, the first point that was very predominant in the martyr's mirror was the concept of the two kingdoms. That there was a kingdom of this world and there was a kingdom that God ruled with the rulers of this world in a political sense setting up the kingdoms of this world as He would, but that was in stark separation from the kingdom of God in the church and in the believers.

And that those two should not have communion together. That God has a kingdom politically and a kingdom socially that rules over the affairs of this world, but that He has a kingdom of God where He communes with people on a moral basis.

They are born again and are members of that kingdom and therefore should be separated from the kingdom of this world and not have any parts with the political and patriotic things in this world. They believed in the two kingdoms and much more could and should be said on that subject.

But also in that there is a separation of church and state. And maybe I'll get to speak a little bit about the ecumenical movement at the end that I'd just like to show you how that is being eroded in our very midst.

Two Kingdoms, Believer's Baptism, and Anabaptist Doctrines

The two kingdoms, that there is a political kingdom, Romans 13, and there is a spiritual kingdom, John chapter 3, the new birth, being born of the Spirit. And those two are contrary one to the other. And even though God rules over them both, yet the one, they don't know He's ruling over it.

They have rejected Him and nevertheless He through His sovereign power still sets up kings and takes down presidents and so forth according to His divine plan. And everything is overseen by Him. But they are not in His will and they are not born again.

And I don't believe it's possible for a ruler of this nation to be a born again Christian and still rule over the nation. I don't think that's possible. The next one that is a cardinal doctrine, may I say, or a very important doctrine of the defenseless Christians through the ages is that of believer's baptism.

That a man or a woman should be baptized upon confession of faith with full adult mentality and understanding and therefore enter into a covenant with God for the faith that He has found, for the faith that He has embraced and seal that faith with holy baptism.

And thousands upon thousands of people have died at the expense of that. Now, that is a very interesting subject in our day and especially in the realm of my ministry because I minister much to former Anabaptist people.

And we have come, this is how far the apostasy has come, we have come full circle and we're knocking on the door of Catholicism today in our plain churches. In the last two weeks, I think, I should say about five or six weeks, I was in Bolivia a while ago, I came home in early July, and while there I found out that in Nova Scotia and in Bolivia, both comments have been made by Anabaptist descendant people, direct descendants of the Anabaptists, that if a baby has been baptized, they should not be baptized again.

A direct refutation and contradiction of the entire defenseless Christian stance through the ages. Men are deceived to that degree that they believe that if an infant is baptized, they should not, what has happened, they should not be baptized again.

What has happened is they are so frightfully afraid of what they call re-baptism or adult baptism that they have brought themselves to that degree and that departure from the faith. But believer's baptism is precious and once again, I would say the same for the evangelical church who is baptizing five and six year olds a lot and giving them a frightful hell story while they are that young in Bible camp or in Sunday school or in evangelistic message and trying to tell them that they'll go to hell if they don't respond and be baptized and so they get them into the water at those ages and they don't have a clue what the new birth is all about and they are not able to comprehend that.

That is heresy. It's not right to do those things. But we need to wait to baptize young people until they understand faith in Christ Jesus and have been born again by the Spirit of God. They are not going to hell if they die at five, six years of age if they have not accepted Christ as their Savior.

They are safe in those ages until they come to the age of accountability and responsibility before God and we don't have an age for that, but we know it's that more adult mindset where they can think through these things and understand them.

And another one was the Catholic Church was the great whore and Antichrist system spoken of in the book of Revelation. The defenseless Christians believe that, especially from the Valdentians and the Anabaptists on, that the Catholic Church was the Antichrist and with great boldness did they speak that truth in their debates.

All of them are declaring, they usually declare the priests to be some kind of occultic witchcraft magicians to try to put the body and the blood of Jesus and cause it to be the actual body and blood as you take the wafer in the Catholic Church which the Catholics believe.

Our brothers would tell them that that is witchcraft or is occultism to believe those kind of things and they called those men the right kind of names in showing them very clearly that they are a total departure from truth by believing such things.

So they also believed that. Now let me just go, I'd like to give you a little bit of some of the tenets of the Anabaptist vision that became very predominant which again in some of the Valdentians I'm going to give here at this time.

They believed in a practical literal interpretation of scripture. Now one of the great differences between Zwingli and Luther and the Anabaptists was the fact that both of them would declare that they believed in sola scriptura, that the Bible is the only way of faith.

But they did not believe in following Christ in life and that developed a weak mentality of a historical ascent to believe that there was a Jesus and He died on the cross but not a hard experience that so changed their life that they were willing to live as Jesus did and live a separated godly life.

The Anabaptists were not known for their theological expertise. They were not considered theologians. Knowledge came much by obedience and by doing and following Christ in His life and by understanding the scriptures but nevertheless they were the greatest debaters and refuters of lies and untruth in the debates, in the trials.

If you read that in the martyr's mirror you will find out that some of those men could debate beyond anything that I've seen in our time. They were well versed in the scriptures and they understood them and they believed the scripture that it should be given them what to speak by the Holy Spirit when they are brought before authorities like that and God manifested that very clearly.

That is a wonderful thing how though none of them had gone to Bible school there were no theological institutions. There were no seminaries at that time. Well there were in the state church but not for them.

That was taboo to all of them and they just simply took the word of God and believed it by faith, practiced it and from there on we have this great revival coming out. Now I believe the Anabaptist revival was one of the greatest revivals in all time.

I don't know how much you realize that the influence of Anabaptism had on the entire world in the time of its great day but the reason that anybody today basically has freedom of religion or freedom of conscience it started with the Anabaptists.

Before that everybody in every local town was coerced into the religion of the town. If it was Catholic everyone had to be Catholic. If it was Reformed everyone had to be Reformed. If it was Lutheran everyone had to be Lutheran and they had no clue or concept of freedom of religion or freedom to live your faith according to how you understand the word of God and through Anabaptisms those governments including the government that we have here so powerfully influenced them that it has brought us the freedom that we know today and we question also how much that freedom is actually what is happening with that freedom today but nevertheless the church has enjoyed many many centuries here or a number of centuries of freedom of religion.

Swearing. They believed that swearing was wrong and you could not, you needed to literally believe as the Sermon on the Mount taught that your yea was yea and your nay nay and whatsoever was more than these cometh of evil.

The Catholic inquisitors and examiners would swear and curse in front of the Anabaptists but they would only answer with a simple yes and no answers and affirm the things which they said from the scripture.

Marriage, Modesty, and Separation From the World

Divorce and remarriage. We have that as a major thing today being tolerated extensively in the evangelical world. In the Catholic church likewise somewhat is beginning to or annulling the marriage is what they have done to get by their stance of not believing in divorce.

They just have the marriage annulled and that of course is allowing them to leave a wife and marry another. But that also was a major issue through Anabaptism in its years to believe against the divorce and remarriage.

Another one we have is modest apparel or modest attire. Void of outward display. That was also a major tenet of the Anabaptist movement down through the years where they covered their bodies, they covered the nakedness of their body and would stand against the exposure that we know today that is again has taken over extensively in much of the churches everywhere.

Jewelry, rich lifestyles and so forth were rejected. They covered their heads according to the electoral understanding of 1 Corinthians 11 as a display of submission under their authority, their husband and also because of the angels and other reasons could be given there.

Separation from the world and non-resistance were also major doctrines among them. But they knew what they believed and they defended everything by scripture. It was not empty standards or just futile things that have no basis and no foundation in the word of God.

That's why you find the confession of faith in the martyr's mirror so in contrast with the common standard books that are extant today in many of the Anabaptist churches that have come from them. You have a standard book, quite a thick book today and ever getting thicker as men try to legislate holiness and rule over their people by rule, by standard rather than by spiritual life and by the power of the Holy Ghost and by revival and by repentance and so forth.

They try to legislate holiness by rule and by standards and that the Anabaptist confession of faith have nothing of. They do not have a detailed standard on exactly how a man should comb his hair or what color socks or shoes he should wear or how he should hold up his trousers or whether he should have a beard or not a beard and all those things.

They are nonexistent in the confessions of faith of Anabaptism and I only say that to remind you as to how far many of these groups have departed from that historical faith. And yet the issues were much the same as today in their refutation and separation from Catholicism and Lutheranism and the Reformed Church a lot of the issues are the same.

Because those churches would not take the Word of God literally, because they would not, they just ignored many of those things as you know there are many evangelicals today who question whether the Sermon on the Mount is even for our day and is basically being rejected to the thousand year reign or to some other age.

The separation of church and state already mentioned, but I'll just give you a few quotes here that I'd like to give. Luther said, Sin boldly, but believe in God's forgiveness. Imagine how that easy believism gave the license to sin back and then coupled again with unconditional eternal security made a haven for people to live in sin and not depart from it.

Hans Dink said, An Anabaptist said, No man can truly know Christ except he follow Him in his life. The Anabaptists believe in discipleship. They believe that young men should be, young women should be taught and instructed.

And though I believe that a lot of this responsibility should lie upon the Christian home, I do realize that it also lies upon the Christian church and there should be much instruction given concerning the way of Christ and discipleship of a godly life after the teaching and example of Christ.

Christ was their hero. They could not accept the Reformed view of total depravity. That is a marked difference likewise of the defenseless Christian in the martyr's mirror. They did not believe that a man was so depraved that he couldn't seek after God.

It was so beautiful again to hear some of the testimonies this week of how your searchings for God in a very primitive and a very small way began in some of your hearts and manifested and grew and increased until you were born again and God's mercy was upon you.

But the belief of total depravity of Calvinism is of such that a man is so deprived that he can't do anything, so depraved that he can't do anything and he just has to sit there and wait on God to call him.

And I remember years ago finding people that were in the worst of sins and bound by them and felt they had to sit on their rocking chair and wait till God would move that there was nothing they could do to turn from their sin and repent and come to God.

God have mercy upon such a deception, such a lie given to the people and is taking millions to hell today. I actually believe that. They are going to hell because they do not believe that they can seek after God and read the Word of God and pray and cry out to God for His mercy upon their life and their sin and help them.

The Anabaptists believed that man was responsible for their actions. All of them. And that if they found themselves like many testimonies gave, that I can't do it. I can't live the Christian life. I need help from God.

And that opened the door and God's mercy came upon them. The baptism of infants was a major issue in the debates in the martyrs' mirror. All the way back through, the infant baptism came on the scene shortly after some of the early church fathers began to depart somewhere around 200 A .D.

They got the idea that baptism, the first flaw was baptismal regeneration. That it is actually baptism that saves you. And then when they reasoned that, then they began to think if children die without being baptized, they'll go to hell.

And so that brought about infant baptism. But it is because of the era of baptismal regeneration that the water washes away sins and baptism truly converts the individual. And that is a false concept.

That is not true. We need to have a spiritual experience, as the Bible says, of the Spirit. And where the wind blows, you can't see where it comes or where it goes. So are they. That must be born of the water and of the Spirit.

And not by some outward ceremony and there expect baptism to be your conversion. But like was said to us in one of the testimonies the other night, the individual was that ignorant of that, that he actually felt like baptism was the conversion point.

And multitudes of people today, young people, wait for the change. But nothing happens at their baptism. Because they are waiting upon the baptism to do something to them. And they have never sought after God in a spiritual way.

They have never truly repented of their sins and cried out to God for mercy. Another tenet of the defenseless Christians or Anabaptists was the fact that we can overcome sin by the grace of God. Anabaptism was a positive belief, not a negative one.

They believed that He could do something for you. And that He gave you power over sin. They believed in that resurrection power Brother Daniel spoke of the other night. That that would change you and you could call out upon God for that power in your life.

And every sin that you were bound by, any wicked habit could be overcome. And they rejected the view of just being poor human beings and needing to pray every night before you go to bed that God would forgive you as was more extant among the Protestant people around them.

They believed that life was an ongoing struggle against temptation. But man could resist it. But there was always a possibility of backsliding, of recanting under persecution. And hundreds and hundreds of them did recant.

I was reading an account yesterday again of a group of women that were threatened with being buried alive. And I can't imagine that they did that quite a bit. There were times when they buried women alive and burned men at the stake or killed them with a sword.

And upon hearing that, you know, a number of them recanted and went back. Now, praise God, some of the men likewise did through those years. But there's certainly a number of them that after they came to their senses they realized how great they had sinned and repented again and went right back and told the authorities that I was wrong to recant.