The Reformation Period (Part 1)

So the next period of church history we're going to look at is the Protestant Reformation.

So we finished the Dark Ages or the Middle Ages last time. So the

Reformation period is from 1517 to 1648.

So I'll start by reading this definition. The Protestant Reformation refers to the widespread religious, cultural, and social upheaval of the 16th century in Europe that broke the hold of the medieval church, allowing for the development of personal interpretations of the

Christian message and leading to the development of modern nation -states. This is often one of the things you'll hear from the

Roman Catholic Church. They'll say, you know, before the Reformation there was the one true church and then now that the

Bible is in everyone's hands now you have 30 ,000 different Protestant denominations and oh, shouldn't we want to go back to having the one unified church?

Well, the reality is the Church of Rome really wasn't all that unified. There is so much corruption and having the

Bible in the hands of the common man, do some people misuse it and misinterpret it?

Yeah, that's happened and that's a problem, but Rome ruling for a thousand years, being called the

Dark Ages and the torture and the abuse, I think we're much better despite some of the problems that we have now.

I think we are, I know we are much, much better off. So the

Reformation really broke the hold of the Roman Catholic Church which basically ruled all of Europe.

So remember the Roman Empire fell first in the West and then the Byzantine Empire in the

East, the Eastern Roman Empire fell and now the Holy Roman Empire is starting to fracture and the

Holy Roman Empire would officially dissolve somewhere around 1804, 1805, 1806, around then.

Okay, so the heart of the Protestant Reformation, when you hear about the

Reformation, what do you think of? Okay, Martin Luther, the 95

Theses. What was that about? What was the main issue? If you remember from last time?

Indulgences, that's really what sparked Luther to question the Catholic Church.

So at the heart of the Protestant Reformation lay four basic questions. Number one, how is the person saved?

Number two, where does religious authority lie? Does it lie in the

Catholic Church or the Word of God? Well, the Protestants said the

Word of God. We say the Word of God, amen? But number three, what is the church?

And then number four, what is the essence of Christian living? So these are sort of the four basic questions.

How is a person saved? Where does religious authority lie? What is the church?

And what is the essence of Christian living? So in answering these questions, the

Protestant Reformers developed what would be known as the five solas of the

Reformation. You know three of them because I like to repeat three of them often, you know, grace alone, faith alone, and Christ alone.

But there are five solas. So sola is Latin for the word alone.

So what are the five solas? Sola Scriptura, that's scripture alone. So the

Bible alone is the sole authority for all matters of faith and practice. So sola

Scriptura, sola gratia, which is salvation by grace alone, sola fide, which is salvation by faith alone.

So we're justified by faith in Christ alone, not the works of the law. Sola Christus, which means what?

Take a guess, yeah. Christ alone, salvation is found only in Christ.

And then sola Deo Gloria, which means to the glory of God alone.

So scripture alone, salvation is by grace alone, by faith alone, and Christ alone, to the glory of God alone.

And the Catholic Church really took objection to this. Not only did they believe that they were the true church and they they got to decide all these things, they took issue with sola fide, right?

That salvation is by faith alone because they said no, salvation is by faith plus what?

Works. And that's still the divide between Protestants and Catholics today, that we believe the person is saved by faith.

They believe a person is saved by faith plus works and yeah, and faith plus the church and faith plus the sacraments and faith plus, you know, giving money and getting people out of purgatory early with the indulgences.

So we talked about this last week. The main figure of the Reformation was a German monk named

Martin Luther. We talked about him quite a bit. So we're not going to spend as much time this week discussing

Luther. In the last period, there were other men because we think of Luther as the guy and he was the guy.

But before Luther, there were men like John Wycliffe, John Huss. They were not Protestants.

It was before the Reformation, but they they were not Catholic either. They were opposing the

Catholic Church. So there's always been people outside of the Catholic Church that opposed the church because people have it in their mind that before the

Reformation, the Catholic Church was the only church that existed and everybody was Catholic.

All true Christians were Catholic before the Reformation. That's simply not true. So Rome would have us to believe that, but that's not the case.

So many of these men would translate the Bible, try to get the Bible into the common languages so people could read it for themselves because they knew once people started reading the

Bible for themselves, they would see very clearly that what the Catholic Church was teaching and what they were doing was obviously not biblical.

So Luther, he's the main figure of the Reformation. And I just want to read this brief history of how the

Reformation started. What made the Reformation possible was the printing press.

We realized that the Holy Spirit was involved and God's sovereignty was involved, but humanly speaking, the printing press is really what made the

Reformation possible because endless copies of Luther's writings could be just printed up and just spread all over Europe.

So it says, in the 16th century, theologians and scholars across Europe were starting to question the doctrines of the

Roman Catholic Church. During the same time, translations of texts such as the

Bible and the writings of the early Christians became more widely available. On his visit to Rome, Luther was troubled by the extravagance and corruption of the

Pope and the clergy, and he began to specifically question the sale of indulgences.

So Luther took a pilgrimage to Rome and he saw the corruption just right before his eyes, and that really got him questioning everything.

So what is an indulgence? Who remembers what an indulgence is? Yeah, go ahead.

The Pope offers you, well, not the Pope, the priest offers you forgiveness for sins if you pay so much money.

Right, right. And it did have to start with the Pope. So a local parish priest couldn't do this.

It had to come from the top. So the Pope would make a decree that people could get out of purgatory sooner if you bought what was called an indulgence.

Of course, yeah, to get an indulgence, you had to pay cash money for it. So if a

Catholic died in a state of grace, their loved one could pay money to the church.

And even today, this happens. You can have your deceased loved one's name attached to a mass.

And after so many masses are held, you know, it's like earning points.

And if a bishop is the one doing the mass, you get more points. Or if the archbishop is the one doing the mass, you get even more time and you get time knocked off of their stay in purgatory, the more money you give, more masses that are held.

And this is still going on today. So in the 16th century, salesmen were going around Europe selling pieces of paper known as an indulgence.

You paid for it to help get your deceased loved ones out of purgatory. And they even had a jingle, you know, like a commercial, have a little song that kind of sticks in your mind to help sell the product.

Well, they had a jingle for the indulgences. So it went something like this, when a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs.

So that really, you know, I don't know if it rhymed in German or whatever. And an angel gets his wings.

Maybe that was part of it too. I don't know. But that's how they built St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.

So that palace in Vatican City today, it was built off the backs of the poor in Europe.

They paid indulgences. That's how the church earned all that money. So believing the sale of indulgences to be corrupt,

Luther posted his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg.

And it was done in order to invite scholarly debate. Luther did not intend to oppose the church and to split the church.

He didn't want to do any of that. Luther considered himself a devout Roman Catholic. He wanted to help.

He wanted to purify the church. He wanted to get rid of this practice. But somebody took down his writings, made a bunch of copies and sent them throughout

Germany and Europe and made its way all the way to Rome. From what

I understand, the Pope actually read his writings and he just dismissed it.

And he said, this is just the rantings of another German monk and he'll sober up in the morning.

Apparently, that was the Pope's response. Luther was drunk one night and just got carried away.

And he didn't think he didn't take it all that seriously. But in 1518, Catholic officials, eventually they had to take it seriously.

And the Catholic officials called Martin Luther to Augsburg to defend his position before an assembly.

After three days, no agreement was reached. And November 1518, the

Pope spoke against Luther's writings as contradictory to the Catholic teachings.

And after several papal commissions, Pope Leo X issued a decree in 1520 calling

Luther's ideas, what's the word? Begins with an H. Yeah, they were heretical.

So Luther was given 120 days to recant. Did he recant?

No, he did not recant. And there's a great story behind all of that. But because he refused to take back his statements, he was thus excommunicated from the

Catholic Church in January 1521. In May, yes,

Marcus. What's the number 95? Is that different? 95 different points that he made?

Yeah, there were 95 questions or points of that he wanted to debate.

Okay. Yeah. So in May 1521, the Roman Emperor Charles V ordered that Luther's writings be burned.

And Luther, now he realizes what could happen. He's fearful for his life. So he hid out in a castle and he worked on his

German translation of the New Testament, a project completed in four months and published in September 1522.

Luther's translation of the entire Bible was released in 1534. So now people were getting a copy of the word of God in their own language.

Because before that, when the Catholic Church ruled Europe, this is hard to imagine, but the average

Christian would probably never even see a Bible. Maybe there was one chained to the altar up front, but you couldn't touch it.

You would never see a Bible. You could never read a Bible. You had to get the story from the priest.

And even then the mass was done in Latin. The people really had no idea of what the

Bible really taught. So this is a major turning point. The Bible is being given back to the church.

Okay. Here's the problem though. So a lot of good things were happening. The Bible is getting out there, but the reforms sparked by Luther and his writings, it started to become more political rather than simply theological.

There were people that cared about the religious element, but there's always those people who want to use a crisis for political purposes, right?

So Lutheranism became the official church in Germany and other European nations.

They adopted their own version of Protestantism. So the church in England had, or England had the

Church of England. The Dutch had the Reformed Church. Well, that was later on,

I guess, but each church, each nation had their own version depending on what it was, but there's still some countries that were

Catholic. So there are some good things happening, some bad things happening.

The doctrine that came out of the Reformation to a the basics, the

Bible, grace alone, faith alone. But really it's questionable whether or not all the

Protestants really believed that because they were just seeing, some of them were just seeing that the

Catholic Church is now out of our lives. We don't have to worry about things like the Inquisition. And we can have our country to ourselves.

We can decide what direction we're going to go in. So some people were more interested in the political element.

Let's turn to Matthew chapter 13, because now instead of the

Catholic Church having control, now the Lutheran Church in Germany had a lot of power, right?

And the Church of England had a lot of power. So throughout

Europe after the Reformation, the church and the state and all these different countries were still linked.

That didn't change because of the Reformation. So you still are going to run into some of the same problems that you had with the

Emperor Constantine. That this state church now, there's people that accept the truth of what

Scripture says, but then there are people that are joining the church. They're joining Christianity for the political advantage.

You know, people have, they see the handwriting on the wall that in order to succeed in German culture, being a

Lutheran is the thing to do. And they might not necessarily be convinced because of the doctrine.

So there's that whole issue of politics involved, unfortunately.

So here in Matthew 13, the reason I wanted to turn here is because Jesus taught this parable of the mustard seed, how the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven would grow and grow, would go from a tiny mustard seed into a large tree, right?

So naturally because these churches are growing in power, Satan's influence,

Satan's ministers are going to try to creep in. So look at Matthew 13, starting in verse 31, another parable he put forth to them saying, the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field, which indeed is the least of all the seeds.

But when it is grown, it is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches.

So that sort of seems like a strange parable. Okay. Grows into a tree and the birds come and nest in the branches.

What, so what, what does that mean? Well, the birds are likely symbolic for the devil.

If you remember the seed in the previous parable, the parable of the sower, the birds that came and ate the seed thrown by the wayside, the birds represented

Satan, who would snatch away the word sown in the people's hearts. Remember? So the birds probably represent

Satan. So I said this before church history, really it's, it's messy.

A lot of good things were coming out of the reformation, but it's not as simple as Catholic, bad

Protestant, good Catholic church is bad. All the Protestant churches were good. It's not that simple, is it?

Because many of the Protestants ended up persecuting people just like the Catholic church did.

Because again, you have this merger of, of church and state happened in England, happened in Germany, happened, happened everywhere.

Besides the Protestants still retain many of the Catholic teachings such as infant baptism on millennialism union of church and state.

But the reason why we look at the reformation as a net positive is because of the gospel, right?

The gospel was rediscovered or recovered for lack of a better term.

That salvation doesn't come from the church. It doesn't come from the Pope. It doesn't come from the sacraments. Salvation comes from who?

Christ. Yeah. So the Protestants at least had that right. But again, there were people that wanted to use the reformation for political advantage.

So bad people, the point is bad people, just like bad people corrupted and kind of got into the

Catholic church, bad people ended up getting into the Lutheran church, bad people, unbelievers crept into the church of England.

It it's just a something that's going to happen. All right.

I said that the Protestants persecuted some people. Do you know what group the

Protestants persecuted? Well, there, yeah, there was that.

One thing a lot of people know about Martin Luther, about his writings against the Jews, Luther was very anti Jewish.

So there's no doubt that some Jews were persecuted by the Catholics and by some of the Protestants.

That's true. But there were some Christian groups that were persecuted by some of the Protestants. So the

Lutherans and the Protestants ended up persecuting the Anabaptists. So we'll get into that a little later on.

But if you believed in what we believe in believers, baptism that you have to, you know, dunk somebody by immersion when they're old enough to make that decision, holding that belief could have gotten you persecuted or killed by the

Protestants because the Protestants still kind of viewed themselves as sort of like the true Catholics.

Matter of fact, there's one story that Luther when he was writing his, his translation of the

Bible, there was a Baptist just a matter of yards away from him in a hole, suffering, dying.

And Luther in theory could have gotten them out of there, but Luther left him there to rot. Why? Because he didn't believe in infant baptism.

So the Protestants did a lot of rotten stuff as well. So, all right, we'll come back to that.

Any questions or comments so far? You know, but it's like I said, depending the version of church history you get, it really depends on who's telling it.

Because if a Protestant's telling you church history, the Protestants are great. You know, they can do no wrong.

If a Catholic's telling you church history, Hey, we're the one true church. I'm trying to take an unbiased view of it.

Of course, everyone has some bias, I suppose, but let's, let's touch on this.

What, what's one of the big issues of the reformation that, that just, it's not something

Christians argue about today. It's the view of one of the ordinances, also known as the sacraments.

We have two ordinances. So we've talked about infant baptism. What's the other one? Right. Okay.

So the, the Lord's supper or the Eucharist, how you viewed that was a major issue during this time period.

So I'd like to spend a few minutes on this subject. So the

Catholic church held what view of the Lord's supper or the Eucharist? Yeah.

Transubstantiation that the elements become the literal body, you know, flesh, soul, and divinity of Christ himself.

So this isn't something that churches tend to focus on today, but I think it's really important whether we, again, we call them the ordinances of the church, but they would have called them the sacraments.

They called them sacraments because they thought grace was communicated by, you know, being dunked underwater or having water sprinkled on your head.

They thought that actually washed away sin by eating the bread that grace was imparted to you simply by eating the bread.

But today people have a lax attitude sort of towards everything. But in the past, people were killed over this issue.

If you have the wrong view of baptism, yeah, you might get persecuted. You might die. If you have the wrong view of the

Lord's supper, you might get persecuted. You might get killed. Today we view the

Lord's supper as, you know, I don't know. I feel like we're a little too relaxed on this issue.

I heard one church that did communion using Coca -Cola and Doritos, you know.

Hey, I'm encouraged by your response. You're like, oh man. Another church during the early days of the pandemic,

I heard a priest was baptizing people with a super soaker, just kind of squirting them with water. But, you know, that's the kind of, and I bring that up because that's the type of thing that does happen today.

It just sort of shows people's attitude towards these things. Back then, this was super important.

On the Lord's supper. So the Catholic church taught the doctrine of transubstantiation, that the bread and wine becomes the literal body and blood of Christ.

They claim that this miraculous power was held by the priest. So when the priest held up the bread and the bell rang, the moment of consecration, it was miraculously transformed into the flesh of Jesus.

Other leaders of the Reformation, for example, Holdrick Zwingli, he taught the memorial view of the

Lord's supper that it was symbolic. That's the view that we hold.

The Lutheran church eventually settled on sort of a middle ground. The Lutherans believed in consubstantiation, that Christ was present in the

Eucharist, but the bread didn't literally become his flesh. Christ was present spiritually next to or under the elements.

What does that mean? I don't know, but they said Christ was present spiritually.

So this was a contested issue during the Reformation. Baptism was not as big of an issue except with the

Anabaptists because pretty much all the Protestants agreed on infant baptism. So the Catholic church practiced infant baptism.

Pretty much all the Protestants practiced infant baptism. The one group that held a different view on baptism was known as, what were they called?

Yeah. And that some of those groups are part of this broad label of Anabaptist.

What does Anabaptist mean? Ana, the prefix means again.

So an Anabaptist is one who baptized again. Of course they didn't view it that way because they thought that infant baptism was illegitimate.

So when they baptized somebody, they viewed it as that's the first and only baptism.

But in the eyes of the Catholics and the Protestants, they were re -baptizing people. And technically, most

Christians are not in favor of re -baptizing people. Again, today that's not a point of argument, but back then it was scandalous.

So the Anabaptists, that was a derogatory term, right?

But you know how that goes. They just accepted it. Like, hey, we'll wear that label.

That's fine. So they sort of adopted that name. So here's the thing about the Anabaptists.

They were persecuted by both the Catholics and the Protestants. And sometimes

Anabaptists, depending on who's telling church history, sometimes their history is completely left out.

I've watched documentaries and heard lectures on the Protestant Reformation without the

Anabaptists being mentioned, like, at all. Have you noticed that? Luther, you know,

Luther, John Calvin, those always get mentioned. The Anabaptists sometimes are left out.

And that has caused some people, and the fact that they were persecuted by both sides and that they get left out, it causes some people to want to identify more with the

Anabaptists. So here's the thing. There are some people, and I'm giving all viewpoints here, there are some people who identify with the

Anabaptists as the true Christians, and they would say that even the Protestants are really no better than the

Roman Catholics. Here's one viewpoint that's out there, and I'm not endorsing this view.

I'm just saying it's something that you might run into. There are people who have the idea that, based on Revelation 17, that the

Roman Catholic Church is the whore of Babylon. And I hope you're not offended that I used that language, but that's what they said, that the

Catholic Church was the whore of Babylon, per Revelation 17. Revelation 17 .5

mentions Mystery Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots. So the

Catholic Church is the great whore, and her harlot daughters are who? The Protestants.

So the true Baptist, or the true Christians, sorry, are the Baptists. So that's something that, living in Massachusetts, you might not run into this very much, but if you go down south, it's a little more common.

There are people who think the true Christians are the Baptists. So the Catholics, they're not saved, and you know, the

Protestants, most of them aren't saved either. The true Christians are. Anyone ever come across this viewpoint?

Okay, one or two who are reluctant to raise their hand. Okay, any questions or comments on that?

Yes. So yeah, we're going to get into who are the Anabaptists today.

But yes, the Amish and Mennonite are the two most well -known groups today that came from, or would still identify as,

Anabaptists. So this is a minority position, going back to the Baptist thing, and I'll talk about that history in a second.

You might run across it from time to time, and I just want you to be aware of it, because it all depends on who's telling the story.

Remember, there's the line of the Catholic Church, and then it splits to the Eastern Orthodox. So there's Eastern Orthodox and Catholic, and then the

Catholic splits to the Protestants. But it's all this one line that goes back to the beginning.

There are some people who say, no, there's a whole different line that's never been connected to the

Catholic Church. And some people are partial to that, and I can't prove that's true, but I kind of like that idea.

I don't know. So there's, point being, there's the

Catholic version of history, there's the Protestant version of history, and then there's this other version of history that is a small minority view, but it's out there.

Speaking of the Catholic version of history, did you realize that there was actually a counter -Reformation?

So there's the Protestant Reformation, but the Catholic Church, they had their own Reformation. But that's something we don't really hear about because we're used to the

Protestant version of the Reformation. All right, so let me just spend the rest of the time we have remaining covering this largely ignored group known as the

Anabaptists. So I just want to read this article that I pulled offline.

This is from gotquestions .org. It says that the Anabaptists are not a denomination, and it is unlikely that you will find any church named

First Anabaptist. I guess that's supposed to be a joke. We've all seen the church's

First Baptist Church of Atlanta, right? Second Baptist Church of Greenfield.

Well, there isn't one, but there could be someday. I remember our former pastor said, if I was ever going to pastor a

Baptist Church, I'd want to pastor the last Baptist Church or whatever. But it's a common thing you'll see.

I think there is one city where there's like the 12th Baptist Church, or like a second, third, as it seems sort of ridiculous at a certain point.

But you're never going to see First Anabaptist Church because it's not really a label that they use for themselves.

It's sort of a descriptive title more than an organizational name.

So from the days of the Apostles, this is sort of that third line or that second line of history that doesn't get talked about.

I'm reading from gotquestions .org. It says from the days of the Apostles, there was one church of Jesus Christ with a single body of doctrine taught by the

Apostles and their successors. The various local churches preached repentance and confession of sins along with baptism by immersion as an outward sign of the new life in Christ.

So when is this happening? The early days. Okay. The early days. They're making the case that in the early church, when the

Apostles were still alive in that second generation, believers baptism is what was practiced in the church.

Though under the authority of the Apostles themselves as to the doctrine, so these churches are under the authority of the

Apostles, each church was independently governed by the leaders God placed in them.

There was neither denominational hierarchy nor distinction of us versus them within the various churches.

In fact, Paul soundly rebuked the Corinthians for such divisions. Remember to the first letter to the

Corinthians, he rebuked those who said, we are of Apollos. We are of Cephas.

We are of Paul. So it is sort of unfortunate that churches started to get named after men, you know, the

Lutheran church and on and on and on. But it happened. When disputes over sound doctrine arose, the

Apostles declared God's teaching based on the words of the Lord and the Old Testament scriptures.

So for at least a hundred years, this model remained the standard for all the churches.

So this is the early church. However, starting around 250 AD with the intense persecutions under Emperor Decius, I'm probably mispronouncing that, a gradual change began to take place as the bishops or the pastors of certain notable churches assumed a hierarchical authority over the churches in their regions.

While many churches surrendered themselves to this new structure, there were a substantial number of dissenting churches that refused to come under the growing authority of the bishops.

So over time, certain bishops got really popular, really powerful. They started to exercise control over these other churches and they said, no, we're not doing it.

And that's just something that naturally happens over time. These dissenting churches were first called

Puritans and are known to have had an influence as far west as France in the third century.

See, this is a version of church history I was never taught. Honestly, before reading this article,

I've never even heard some of these things. As the organized church gradually adopted new practices and doctrines, the dissenting churches maintained their historic positions.

By the way, this newly organized church, what is it called? It's called the

Catholic Church. So let me just read that again with that in mind.

As the organized Catholic Church gradually adopted new practices and doctrines, the dissenting churches maintained their historical positions.

And I've said this before, those who, the victors, they write the history, right?

The people in power, they write the history books. So it's easy to leave out these minority groups.

It says the consistent testimony of the church for the first 400 years of its history was to administer baptism to only those who first made a profession of faith in Christ.

Starting in AD 401 with the Fifth Council of Carthage, the churches under the rule of Rome began teaching and practicing infant baptism.

So once Constantine came to power and there's now this unofficial merger of the

Roman Empire and the Catholic Church, that's when you got infant baptism. And that really changed church history for the next, well, forever,

I guess, or at least up until now. With the advent of infant baptism, the separatist churches began re -baptizing those who made professions of faith after having been sprinkled or baptized in the official church.

At this time, the Roman Empire encouraged their bishops to actively oppose the dissenting churches and even pass laws condemning them to what?

To death. This is something that the Protestants did after the

Reformation. They actually said to the, oh, the Anabaptists, you want to baptize people again?

We'll baptize you. And what did they do? They drowned them to death. We'll give you your baptism.

And they drowned, again, what some people would say were the true

Christians. So the re -baptizers became known as Anabaptists.

Though the churches in various regions of the empire were also known by other names, such as Donatus, Waldensies, et cetera.

Who's heard of the Donatus or the Waldensies? Waldensies. Yeah. Yeah. I've heard of them.

Never. Again, one of these groups that kind of gets ignored. And if this is true, you see why.

These Anabaptist congregations grew and prospered throughout the Roman Empire, even though they were almost universally persecuted by the

Catholic Church. By the time of the Reformation, Martin Luther's assistants complained that the

Baptists in Bohemia and Moravia were so prevalent, they said they were like weeds.

When John Calvin's teachings became commonly known, many of the Waldensies united with the

Reformed Church. From this point on, the various Anabaptist churches gradually lost their ancient names and many assumed simply the name

Baptist, though they retained their historic independence and self -rule.

So at some point, the Calvinists and the Baptists joined together. But of course, there's still other groups that didn't join with the

Calvinists. So who are the Anabaptists today? Again, there's some people that would really question this version of church history.

Because if it's true, what does that say about the Protestants? That they're really not much better than the

Catholics. So again, I'm not here to say that this is the real version.

I'm just giving you all different sides. Because again, sometimes one side is left out.

So who are the Anabaptists today? As we mentioned a moment ago, the most identifiable Anabaptists today are the

Mennonites and the Amish, though many modern -day Baptist churches would also identify themselves as the heirs of the

Anabaptist traditions. At this point, I should say there are some Baptists that you can trace back to the

Reformation period or early American history. So I would say there are sort of two versions of Baptists.

The Mennonites were formed in Holland as the result of the severe persecution in Switzerland and Germany.

The Anabaptists who fled to Holland were organized under the teachings of a man named what?

The term Mennonite comes from a man named? Yeah, Menno Simons.

He was a Catholic priest who aligned himself with the Anabaptists in 1539.

So they became known as Mennonites. Of course, that was a derogatory term as well. But hey, they just accepted it.

It's argued that the term Christian was originally a derogatory term, but hey, that's fine.

You want to call us Christians? Fine, we're Christians. Many Mennonites are identifiable by their plain dress and the head coverings worn by their women.

The Amish traced their history back to a split of the Anabaptists in 1693 when who are the

Amish named after? Jacob Ammann. When Jacob Ammann felt that the

Swiss brethren were veering away from the strict teachings of Menno Simons, so he started his own group, the

Amish, and they had an even stricter form of church discipline. The average person today, if you ask them about the

Mennonites, in their mind, the Mennonites are super strict, right? And so I mentioned that because the

Amish looked at the Mennonites that these people are too worldly. That tells you what they would think of most

Christians. So the Amish were even more strict than the Mennonites. So all of that to say this, and by the way, the

Amish, they believe in separation from society around them. You probably know this. They shun modern technology, keep out of political and involvements, dress plainly, but all that to say this, this is the version of church history or this piece of church history often gets ignored.

And if true, it really shatters the idea that some people have that at one point in time, there was just the

Catholic church and that's the only church that existed. And then after the Reformation, the Protestants, that all the true

Christians were then Protestants. And again, church history, it's complicated.

It's messy. And it kind of depends on who you're listening to. But one thing

I can say is that the idea that there was a point in time where there was only one church, the

Catholic church, the one true united church, that is simply not true. There has always been other groups.

It would sort of be like belief. And if people have the idea today, I think people do have this idea that what are you?

Are you Catholic or Protestant? You have to be one or the other. Oh, you're not Catholic. You're Protestant.

A lot of people think that, well, I'm not Catholic. I must be Protestant. Well, that's sort of like saying that all the

Jews in the first century, they must have been either Pharisees or Sadducees. They must have been one or the other, right?

Wrong. It's sort of like, well, what, what do you like better Coke or Pepsi? And what if I don't like either?

Is there no third option? Well, there is. Contrary to popular belief,

I was going to say Republican or Democrat, but I didn't want to go in that direction. But you get the idea. It's not always that simple.

People can't always be forced into this one box. So we'll end there.

But I think it's interesting to know that, yeah, the Catholic church, they didn't have a monopoly on Christianity.

It's simply not true. And today, if you look at Protestantism, because let's face it, even, even today, do, does the average

Protestant church believe in the five solas of the reformation? Yeah.

If they did believe one, you'd be lucky faith, the law, grace alone, faith alone in Christ alone.

I believe that is the gospel. I believe that's true, but your average Protestant or the

Catholic church never believed that. And your average Protestant church today, most of them, some of them probably do, but many of them don't.

So where does that leave you? Where does that leave us? Here's the thing. I'm part of the church of Jesus Christ.

It doesn't have to be a denomination. Matter of fact, based on what we just read in the early days of the church and the book of Acts, were there denominations?

No, there were just simple followers of Christ. We look to the word of God and the apostles as their authority.