(The Recovery of the Apostolic) 1. the Rise of Anabaptism — Dale Heisey

Seeking God’s Presence Through His Word

We pray, Holy Spirit, that you would come upon this assembly this afternoon, and into these few hearts here gathered, reveal thyself through thy Word, for thy Word is truth, and thy Word is alive, thy Word is ever-living, thy Word is able to change the heart of a man to make it like unto thine own, and form thine own image within us.

And if, Fathers, we stand face to face before thee this day, might we, as David ever set the Lord before our eyes, that we might have a perfect model, a perfect example, a perfect light to follow? Dear Father, may our eyes at this moment be removed from man, and may they be fixed upon God.

And may he not be far from us, but may he be near unto every one of us. We might this day in his Word behold him, and hear his voice, and yield ourselves to him in these moments of time. We thank you for the promise of thy visitation, the promise of thy presence.

Dear Father, we look to thee to direct us in the moments to come. Through our Lord and Savior we pray. Amen. I suppose that all of you have done enough of carpentry work, you have all done enough of building, or at least you are acquainted with it, to know that a pattern is a very important part of construction, a blueprint, a pattern.

I am aware that there are some people here who do a lot of building, and I am sure that when they receive a blueprint from a building, and having constructed the edifice, the building from that blueprint, and then are called upon to build another building, they do not build the second one by observing the first one.

They say, well, the roof looks like it's about such a pinch, it looks to me as if the walls are so high, and it looks to me like they used so much concrete here in the footer. But no, to the blueprint we return again, and the second structure is modeled not after the first, but after the original design.

And so it is that when a person is cutting out stair trusses, or whatever it is, the first pattern is laid out, and now we follow that pattern. But I don't use the last piece I made to determine how to make the next one, but I go back continually to the original.

You understand that. And you know what soon happens if I take the last thing I built, the last thing I made, and use that pattern for the new. For very, very soon, in a very short time, the things that I made will be quite removed from that with which I started.

Returning to Apostolic Foundations

But I'm convinced that one of the things we have seen, even in our lifetime, and certainly it's clear throughout the history of the Christian church, is that Whisper Down the Alley has had a good bit to do with church organization and church life.

Time after time after time, men have rebuilt a model based upon what they have saw already established, and were there once unable to return to apostolic foundations. And it's not satisfactory to me, this afternoon, to show me right here was a good group of people.

Here was a church that did it well. Here's something we appreciated. From my childhood, I remember how it was. I was carried in there. I was baptized there. I was married there. All the churches drifted.

If only we could go back to where I was as a boy. I want to tell you something. You didn't go back 2 ,000 years far enough. There needs to be a return to the apostolic position, a return to apostolic vision.

I'd like you to turn in this program, if you will, to the last page. Well, there is somewhat of an outline given here, if we will, of what the brethren who have been responsible for this work would like to achieve, by the grace of God.

And in that, it has been said that this shall be, to some extent, a study of the history of Anabaptism. I want to make it very clear at the outstart that what we study in Anabaptism is not an attempt to learn from them how to make a model or build a model in our time.

We look at Anabaptism as a sixteenth-century model of apostolicity. That is, in that period of time, 1525 to 1570, which will be the years we will be confining ourselves to when it comes to Anabaptism, in that period of time, there were those who attempted to return to apostolic doctrine.

They attempted to return to the teaching of Christ and the apostles. All else notwithstanding, in anything standing in the way of any structure or organization or potency that had arisen in that interim of time was disregarded, and it was returned to the apostolic position.

And I realize with you, and we'll look at that somewhat this afternoon, that there were some mistakes made in their attempt to do that. And that's why it would be a foolish thing for us to model ourselves today after what they did, although we certainly owe a tremendous debt to their somewhat, shall I say, maintenance of a holy position that we have fallen heir to today.

I am concerned about any position that says, here was a good way to do it, if only we can return there. I have that problem with statements such as this that appeared in a recent and fairly well-known in this area publication, written in the fall of the year, 1981.

Someone was trying to define what they felt as a church group, their responsibilities were in this hour time, and these words appeared across the pulpit and written on papers that carry like this, to carry out the old discipline of Lancaster Conference.

And I'm here to say that any such attempt is futility. If my purpose is to go back to some group that I feel has done well, or had done well for a period of time, and feel that I am responsible to maintain what they did, to maintain what they have, then I am repeating the error of the Reformers, who made that very serious mistake in supposing that God had raised them up for the purpose of preserving a system, raised them up for the purpose of preserving a system that they unfortunately thought had fallen.

They considered Catholicism at that time to be a church fallen, and there they are seriously mistaken. Catholicism was not a church fallen. It was not a church at all. It was Babylon. It was Babylon in the midst of the years.

It was Babylon in the midst of the times. They were wrong to suppose that there was a church there that they could restore at all, or could reform, or could improve. It was a Babylonian system. I wonder if we understand the difference between Reformation and Restoration.

Building on the Foundation of Christ and the Apostles

We had in our school just a few weeks ago a brother who was teaching us how foolish it would be for a mason to build a stone or brick or block wall, and in the midst of that wall, based upon the teaching of chapter 3 in 1 Corinthians, how foolish it would be in the midst of that wall to stick some wood, or to stuff in some straw, or to put in some hay, or some other combustible and very weak material.

We know very well what happens. The structure is weakened. And then they take that straw out of there, and that chaff out of there, and the wood out of there, and the sawdust out of that wall, and they get somebody in there to skilfully place bricks in there.

I'm telling you this afternoon, it would be utterly foolish if all the while the wall was built upon a pile of sand. But there must be, first of all, we must have this assurance that we're building upon a foundation, a right foundation, and then we can build there.

And so if the wall looks ever so good, but has some straw and some hay in it, to take that out and change it will not make a strong structure if we're not upon the solid foundation of Christ and the apostles.

It's why I'm concerned that we do not repeat in our time the errors of those before us who felt responsible to maintain or improve a bit, or pull the straw and chaff out of a weak system and put some bricks in there to shore it up and make it stronger, rather than returning to apostolic doctrine.

And so our emphasis is what to be throughout these six weeks as the Lord would tarry. We want to return to the Bible position, and we will be using only a few lessons from the Anabaptists to show the challenges they faced in their time.

And I'm sure you'll recognize with me quite a parallel to what we're facing today. Chapter 3, they say it was Menah Simon's theme text. Verse 11, For other foundations can no man lay, than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

How does a person determine if he's building upon that foundation or not? The Bible gives us more help on it. Ephesians chapter 2, verses 19 and 20. Now therefore you are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints of the household of God, and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone.

In Acts chapter 2, and I think the verse is quoted in the front of your program. I'm not quite sure. The brother may have referred to it in his devotional period already this afternoon. I want to read, if I may, verses 41 and 42.

They gladly received his word, were baptized. The same day they were added unto them about three thousand souls. They continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.

I'm particularly concerned about that phrase, continue steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship. Now would you turn with me to the fourth chapter of 1 John, where there is an interesting phrase here in verse 6.

Verse 5 reminds us that there are those people who are of the world. Therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them. They hear the world, and the world hears them. However, the contrast is in verse 6, we are of God.

He that knoweth God, heareth us. He that is not of God, heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error. May I make a bold statement this afternoon. If you are of God, and have the spirit of God in your heart, you honor God's word.

You believe its message. Your heart is open to the movings, and motions, and drivings of the spirit within yourself. If that is the case, you will hear what is, you will say its truth. Your heart will agree.

In your heart and mine, concur this afternoon that this message is what I want for my heart. It is right, it rings clear. The same gospel you speak is the same thing that I feel moving in my heart. For else, these words are unclear words.

They are sounding brass and tingling cymbal. They are not the words of God. Now what are we doing when we're hearing, what we're hearing? Who are we hearing, and what are we hearing? He that knoweth God, heareth us.

What is he hearing? My position this afternoon is that he is hearing apostolic doctrine. And I base that upon John chapter 8. Would you turn to that? Where Jesus comments on this same thought himself in verse 47.

He that is of God, heareth God's word. Ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God. All that we have in 1 John 4 is that apostle whom Jesus loved commenting on these precious words of Jesus.

If we know God, we hear God's word. And we understand them and receive them. And if we're not of God, we hear them not. Now then, I am concerned that we do more than preserve. Turn in your Bibles while I say this, to 1 Peter chapter 1.

That we do more than preserve corruptible things. What do I mean by corruptible things? Well, the Bible defines what it means and what I mean by that. In chapter 1 of Peter. Forasmuch then, forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.

What do we say? We're not interested this afternoon in preserving some corruptible things. Some things that I've seen in time past. And I liked it. I enjoyed it. Somehow I had a nostalgic effect upon me or some sentimental value to me.

And so I feel called upon to preserve that. No. That's not my purpose. That's not our vision. What we want to preserve is apostolic faith and truth. And let everything else be questioned. Let everything else be challenged.

Let everything else be examined. In the light of that word. I'm a kind of very conscious that I, with the reformers, can make some external changes in my life. Because reform is an external goings-on.

We talked recently in school about reformatory. I remember in about the year 1968 when the state of Vermont did away with all of their corrections, did away with all of their state penitentiaries and county prisons and started a correctional institution.

They called them correctional centers or correctional institutions. Reform schools is what they're called some places. And it's an attempt to take a life that's been out of touch with society and out of tune with itself and somehow make some changes in the life that would acclimate it again to the society in which it owes a debt, to which it owes a service.

Those external changes produce a degree of conformity and make one fit into society. We learned recently of a man who was in jail for a period of time, and when he came out of jail, he was used to opening up his automobile by grabbing hold of the handle and pushing the button in with his thumb.

But he was in jail for so long that the car manufacturers had changed their method of making a handle to the kind where you reach under with your hands and pull on it. Many of you have automobiles of that kind today.

Those of you that have cars. And he was frustrated. He didn't know how to fit into that, and his life was confronted continuously with changes of that kind. And so he needed to be reformed. He needed to change some outward things about himself to fit into society as it then was.

But restoration is not a work on the outside. Restoration is a work in the heart of a man. And so the Anabaptists and Reformers needed to split ways because of that. Why then, point number one, do we study Anabaptism?

I remind you that it is only, as far as we're concerned, one model from the 16th century of a group that attempted to return to the Bible foundations. And so what we're doing today, what we want to see today in our time, is across the land, across the world, within our hearts, for our families, we want to see a 20th century model of a similar return.

That is our desire. I want you to know in beginning here that the Anabaptists were not infallible. They made some mistakes. I think one of the reasons why they had some of the errors inherent with them that they did was because their eyes were pretty closely focused upon the situation in which they found themselves.

You know, it's an extremely difficult thing. In the fray of persecution and desecration, they were in continual conflict. It's a difficult thing to stand back far enough to get a total arama, a total view of God's plan for His church and for His people.

I think they did amazingly well with the limited eyesight they had. And at times with the limited access they would have had to materials. They had the Bible only. But nonetheless, I want to call attention to a few things this afternoon to help you understand that we're not trying to hold Anabaptists up as some particular group that was holy more than others, only as one model that was very effective in its time.

Anabaptist Errors in Applying Biblical Literalism

Number one, in their attempt to be so literal, they were Biblicists, you know. The Bible was literally a babe. In their attempt to be so literal, they at times violated the very spirit of Christ. I can give you a couple of illustrations of this.

They at times were harsh. They at times were denunciatory. They at times were condemning. They at times took things into their hands that were not for them to take into their hands. I'm referring to the time that George Blalrock bounced his way into Nicholas Vilter's pulpit there in Zolichan and said, you weren't called to preach today, I was called to preach.

And forced the attention away from the pastor as he was already in the pulpit and took it upon himself, taking a stick, he had a walking stick, and rotting on the bench to get attention and making such a disturbance as that in the house of God.

And in his zeal to proclaim God's word, and he felt called, he felt compelled to share the message. He knew he had the truth in the faith. But in his attempt to do that, he violated what is obviously the spirit of the Lord Jesus who did not strive nor cry nor cause his voice to be heard in the streets.

I bet that suffices one illustration I'm talking about. Governor Grebel himself, who is oftentimes called the founder of the Swiss Brothers, was very, very sharp and seemed to allow very little room for any thoughts beside his own.

I say that cautiously. I admire, I certainly appreciate the life and testimony he left behind. But I see that in him. And are we not careful, we will notice it in ourselves. We are so right, you know.

We understand things so well, you know. We just don't have any time to listen to anyone else. You better hear me. Because, you know, the Bible, the spirit of the Bible is going to ask us to stop, as we had to do an hour before we came this afternoon, and listen to two ladies that came with a bag around their shoulder.

And in that bag were some papers. I suppose you know what those papers are. Now, these were very well-dressed ladies and very polite, and they had a message to share. And I could have taken those ladies and booted them off the porch and said, You're just a bunch of Jehovah's Witnesses.

You're just a bunch of Russellites. We don't have time for you. Head out the door. We've got the truth, and you're a bunch of heretics, and now leave. But I just wonder if that is truly the way that I can share the life-giving wine of spirituality with somebody in that hour in sore need of it.

And after all, if I had more than they had, wouldn't there be a better way to prove it? Number two, I will talk a little bit about Menno Simons, because some of us have been rather revering a church that seems to have his name.

I'll call attention to three things that you and I would not agree with that he taught. He taught, for instance, in his zeal to maintain church purity. He was so sick and tired of sin in the church, sin in the Corpus Christianum.

He was so tired of a church and state mixed together. He wanted to see church purity. He went to this extreme to do it, that if a believing spouse had an unbelieving partner, he taught that the one must separate from the other, and taught that in direct contradiction to 1 Corinthians chapter 7, where a believing wife, for example, was told if she has a believing husband, you can turn to it and set it yourself to live with him if you allow it so, and in such a manner attempt to raise the children in a pure fashion in purity.

The person gave illustrations from modern times, and would verify that wisdom of Paul's instruction in 1 Corinthians chapter 7 for the good of children. He taught in the second place that his members could be, this is going to shock you, I know it, but he taught that his members could be politicians, that they could be involved in serving in the affairs of state.

He did not require that a person holding office in a political committee or whatever it was, political office, would need to drop that and become part of his church. And we would see that as the, I'm not quite sure why he took that position.

I never found a whole lot of information on it. You can verify what I'm telling you from Franklin Nuttell's book, The Anabaptist Vision of the Church, View of the Church. And then in third place, I want you to know that this man taught a very erroneous view concerning the doctrine of incarnation.

He taught that the Lord Jesus Christ received none of his being or bearing or essence from his mother, that Mary was immaculate and in virginity continually throughout this whole experience, and that nothing from her contributed to the life of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And he felt to do that, I believe, to, well, in doing that, I believe he was trying to maintain a, he was trying to refute Catholicism's holy honoring of a virgin Mary, this immaculate Mother Mary, this Mother of God.

He was trying to eliminate that view, and in so doing, what the Nikolaus extreme, where Mary had nothing at all to do with Jesus' birth. And in so doing, he did not have a man when he was done, I'm afraid.

And the Anabaptists, the Swiss Brethren particularly, never accepted his view on that, nor have I. You can say that thing more particularly if you're interested in doing the research on it. And so these Brethren were not correct in everything, I want you to know that.

I'll call attention to one thing more. And I see this error repeated many times, even in my own life experience, where they tended, in that time of Anabaptism, they tended to depend too much upon the charisma of their leaders.

And when the leaders died, there was a serious dirt. I'm thinking of that particularly in Zelikon. When Mons and Grebel and Blalock were gone, the works fell apart. And I believe really, excuse me, in so doing, and holding up the leaders, and they came in there with great power and great strength and great wisdom, and those men were very, very able men, I'm sure they were, to face what they faced in that time with the kind of zeal and clear thinking that they had.

Because of that, there was a tendency to not depend upon personal prayer, fasting, Bible study, personal devotion, personal feeding, as there should have been. The emphasis was more gathering together, getting together often, hearing this terrific preaching, being involved in these very, very stirring services, these very unique patterns of early and primitive worship, where bread was broken from place to place, and the hands were laid on those called out and sent.

This was so moving at that time. The people just lived from one of those experiences to the next. And in so doing, failed to learn how to feed themselves and how to spend time with God. And I believe that that is one reason why the Anabaptists then were so susceptible to pietism when about a hundred years later, it started to sweep across Europe.

And pietism came without any external emphasis. It came along with an inward view. What's the heart of the man like? Let's look into the heart. How's your relationship with God? And offered to the persecuted Anabaptists of their time an easier and yet a Christian way.

You can be a Christian by having this thing within the heart. You don't need to be out here making some external demonstration and profession of your position. You can stay in the state church. You can remain part of the Corpus Christianum.

You can be part of the Registry if you please. And still have Christ in your heart. You can have that personal, individual life in devotion to God. You don't need the external part. Persecution stopped.

The cross is gone. I have this little peace, this little faith in me. Pietism. And I would say there's some older pillars of the faith than myself here today. And I'm sure you will concur with me. I believe that that is one of the reasons why in the late 60s and early 70s, many of the plain people in Lancaster County, right here where we are today, fell prey to the charismatic movement.

Because even in those times, in conservative circles, the emphasis was not as it ought to have been upon a personal life and walk with God. And when then, someone offered them a stirring experience in the heart, they fell for that thing just rather quickly.

So we need a synthesis. We need to bring it together. Of the external truth and application that God's Word teaches us, along with a holy and healthy emphasis upon my personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, my walk with God, his spirit in my heart, peace reigning in my bosom, in my experience.

I consider those to be, as I said here, a number of weaknesses we have about this movement. And so, if we have our eyes upon Anabaptism alone, we stand a good chance to reproduce their own errors. So let us take our minds and hearts back to the Scriptures.

The Origins of the Anabaptist Movement

I want to say, at this juncture in time, that we who are gathered here have no personal positions to promote. I have no theological system to defend. I'm not here with a favorite verse picked out. And if you don't come to agree with me on this verse, we just won't be able to agree.

And I'm going to have to write you off as someone who doesn't understand the Scriptures. I just have no position like that. We do not. Because I understand the motives of the brethren. There's no church group that we need to advance in this afternoon.

It's just that simple. My concern is only that what we say is God's truth. And I am open to the challenge of being corrected. I will say this, however. In that we propose to be biblical, and we are willing for anyone to teach us from the Scriptures where we have made mistakes.

And I'm expecting that that will happen. Yet we know whom we have believed. We know the Lord Jesus Christ. And we offer Him to you. What then, in brief, were the origins of the Anabaptist movement? How did this thing begin?

And here, if I may, I must be a bit historical. Will you allow that? Some of you have come for that very reason, and I want to hear some of that part of it. And I will try to share it with you in a way that will not be too boring and difficult for you to understand.

Will you go along with me back to about the year 300? Now, that's an approximate year. I'm going back to the year when Constantine was fighting. And in his vision that night, many of you remember the story, he saw a cross in the sky.

And he was told that this sign conquered. And so he took this cross, this sign, and put it on the armor or the chest of his warriors. And before they went to battle the next day, he took them all to the river and had the whole army run through the river for baptism.

And in one sweep through the creek, he baptized the whole pile and Christianized them all of a sudden. We now have something brand new in the history of the world, a Christian army. Something brand new again, a Christian emperor.

Now, unlike many people think, it was not Constantine but one who followed him, Theodosius, who united or married church and state together. And now we have a strange thing. Everybody within the geographical confines of this area, Roman Empire at that time, are Christian people all of a sudden.

And that synthesis, that uniting of church and state, all people in this geographic area, all people living in this political boundary, are all part of the church. That condition existed until the time of the Anabaptists.

There were times here and there, the Carthi, the Waldensians, the Albigensians, numbers of other times, the Lawers, the Hussites, later on, who attempted, Moravian brothers, to break this pattern. But there was no universal or, shall I say, lasting break in this position until 1525.

Let's keep that in the foreground because there must one day be, on this earth, a separation from those who know the Lord and from those who know him not. There must be a division, there must be a separation between the true and the false.

In our time, I must know who are the brethren and who they are not. Consequent to the verses we had here a while ago, you know about the blows of the hammer in 1517 upon a somewhat isolated chapel, Catholic Church in Wittenberg.

And you know the monk who tapped those 95 thoughts written in German upon that door. Before that year was over, numbers of strange things happened. It would be interesting for you to know that that same year, 1517, quite a few miles to the south of the city of Zurich, a strange thing happened.

A man named Erasmus had just completed a new copy of a Greek New Testament. He had been teaching Greek to a number of students there, and this copy of a Greek New Testament came into the hands of that year of a man named Ulrich Zwingli.

And he started studying the New Testament for the first time in his life. He was a Greek student, he had just received an understanding of Greek language, and now he is feeding upon the very words of truth, the very words of God.

This is having an effect on him. Now, history records for us that this Ulrich Zwingli was born exactly seven weeks after Martin Luther was born, who is the man I formerly referred to. And these men became somewhat entranced in a position, having studied the Scriptures on their own, Ulrich Zwingli studying that Greek New Testament, and Martin Luther back here working in Germany.

Each operating in individual spheres, without too much knowledge and contact with each other, were attempting to bring their people to a gospel position. In 1522, this Ulrich Zwingli was called to be the chairman, the head pastor of the largest church there in Zurich, the Großmünster.

And he vowed in his heart, before he accepted this pastorate, that he will do nothing except preach the gospel. Now, you say, well, Brother Dale, that sounds real good, that sounds like he's doing the right thing.

I want to explain to you that that was a tremendously critical thing for Ulrich to undertake. Because prior to that, he would have been responsible to maintain the position and teach the ethics of the church fathers, that is, the past Catholic writers who had given a tenet of faith to the people which would be taught as the word of truth, because it's the word of the church.

But this man proposed to stand before his congregation and preach nothing but the words of this book. It was a new day, really, in Zurich. And people joined Luther's work in Germany and Ulrich Zwingli's work in Switzerland.

And I want to give you at least three reasons why they joined. Why they were Protestants, as they were called. Protestants because they protested against Catholicism. Consider these three things. Why were they Protestants?

Why the Reformers Became Protestants

First of all, they were Protestants because they weren't Catholics. They just happened to be in a canton, in an area, in a state, in a nation that accepted a Reformed position. And so, consequently, we can be Catholics no more, so we must be something else.

There were cantons in Switzerland, for instance, where a person might be a Catholic one year and a Reformed Protestant the next, and a Catholic the next year, all depending upon which army was winning in the Thirty Years' War at the time.

When Catholics were winning, they were Catholics. When the Protestants were winning, they were Reformers, and so on. Another reason for this, of course, was because some of them felt great liberty, great looseness, ah-ha, free from this ritual of Catholicism, paying all these dues, taking part in all these rituals.

Free, free from Catholicism. And so, because they desired that looseness, some of them joined. And those of you that know the life of Martin Luther are aware of how much he lamented that, ere he passed into his tomb.

He attempted to start a free church, and found out he did little more to give people a license for their looseness. Then, number three. There were those who took this position with these two men because they had, with them, been serious students of the Word of God.

My attention comes to three men at this point. Simon Stumpf, Conrad Grebel, and Felix Mons. It just so happened that Oryx Zwingli, who was the older of all these men, had a Bible class of about seven students.

There may have been more than seven at one time, but seven emerged as having taken tremendous interest in this Bible study. And he did more than study with them. He gave them the tools to teach them how to study themselves.

And so, they continued to study after he had ceased. It should be, I'm sure you're aware, that the time came when some conflicts arose between their thinking. And at this point, I would call attention to two specific dates in the life and times of these men.

The one is October, or the meeting in October. This was a memorable day because at this point, the discussion and conflicts and understanding between Zurich, Oryx Zwingli, and his students was widening to the extent that they decided it was time to call the council together, the Zurich council, the 200-man body that was politically responsible for Tenton, Zurich.

Call them together to find out just what, after all, should be done with a man. Shall we continue to observe the mass, as Catholics have done so, or shall we eliminate the mass? And there's a number of words that Simon Stump, one of Oryx's students, comes to our minds on this occasion.

Oryx said, no question, boys. Now, boys, be patient. This question about the mass, that will be decided by the council. We'll let the council decide that. All in all, said Simon Stump. If you look at the back of this folder, you'll see what he answered.

You have not the right to leave the decision of this question to the council. The matter is already decided. The Spirit of God decides it. That happened on that occasion. That marked, really, the beginning of a division between the Reformers and the Anabaptist Brotherhood.

And so because of that, they went their own way, began teaching as God had taught them. Simon Stump said, as he left that place, he said, he's going to leave this meeting. He told Zwingli this. He will leave this meeting and go out and preach nothing else but God's holy word.

And wonder what Zwingli thought of that. And Zwingli said, you can say it in German better than I can. He said, that is right. Das ist korrekt. How do you say it? And he said, I pray you do the same thing.

But that didn't last too very long, because these men intended to do just exactly what they said. And shortly after that, Colonel Grebel had a baby born in his home, and he refused to baptize. And so consequently, now we have the council clapping upon them because you've refused to obey the orders of the church to baptize these babies.