Anabaptist History (Day 17) the Church Splits of Holland - Lessons for Today — Dean Taylor

Church Splits and the Call to Unity

Anyway, so let's look today at the Dutch Mennonite church splits and what they can teach us today. So if we could, let's start off with a word of prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, we come to you in the name of Jesus Christ today, remembering that you called us, you gathered us, and you said that it is you who will plant your church, that you will cause your church, you will make your church to be, and you said that the gates of hell would not prevail against it.

You called us to unity, a unity that we can even hardly understand, the unity between you and the Father and the Holy Spirit. So Lord, as we look at these brothers in Holland in this time period, we ask you to please have us not have a judgmental spirit of them, but perhaps see some of these things that are in our own hearts, some of these different spirits that are in our way we behave, and I pray that we can learn lessons from that, that we can glorify your name in our generation.

Oh God, it's in Jesus' name we pray, and Father, I do pray that you help me today to present these things factually and truthfully, that you would be glorified through everything said. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.

Amen. All right, a quick word on church splits. I have just a few passages here, and if you look at my notes, I was up late again making sure that a lot of these things are factual, so it's a little bit more of an outline type of form.

Consider it my notes, not a complete handout, but it helps me to follow through these different things. And so, as we look at these ideas of, yes sir, oh yeah, did you not get one? And does anybody have one with a bunch of ink marks on it, which was my copy?

All right, I'll trade you. All right, good. Okay, first of all, the whole idea of church splits, it's my feeling that it grieves God, church splits, and many of the ways that we behave, it's not a good thing.

Division as a Serious Work of the Flesh

And I have here a scripture for us, and a couple of them here. I start off with Galatians 5, and this is the contrast, remember, with the fruit of the Spirit. He begins with the works of the flesh, Paul does here to the Galatian church.

And he says, now the works of the flesh are manifest, and they're plain to see, which are these, adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, and those things are pretty obvious.

It's the other part of the list that I think we should pay attention to, particularly with this message today. And that is hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, sedition, heresies, literally in the Greek, the ones who split, envying, murders, drunkenness, revilings, and such like, of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

In other words, it's not a minor point. If however you slice it, if we're, pardon the expression, if we're coming up with this kind of a feeling in our hearts, in our churches, in our spirit, it's a serious offense to God, and it's a serious sin.

I think those scriptures are clear. Another passage that I tend to use, and I've tried to use as a motto in my life, is the passage there in Mark 9. It's an interesting passage when you go look it up.

The apostles are running up to Jesus at this point complaining that people are casting out demons without them, and they're doing it the wrong way. And so they run up to Jesus, and apparently these apostles would prefer people to be demon possessed than not do it their way, you know what I'm saying?

And Jesus gives a very good rebuke to them after He first tells them, you know, they're not against us, they're for us, but He gives us this word, and I think it's a good word to kind of put over this whole era of what goes on.

He says, salt is good. He wants them to be salty, the salt of the earth. Salt is good. But if the salt has lost its saltiness, its savor, it's a different translation, wherewith will it be seasoned? How can it be salted again?

Have salt within yourself, but have peace with one another. That has become like a motto for me. He didn't just say, hey, everything goes, you know, be peace with everybody. He also didn't say you've got to be salty, but there's an incredible balance there between being very convinced, very salty in yourself and your own congregations, but when it's all said and done, have peace with one another.

And it's a good passage. Now, the other passage you know, I think, is in John 17. And I've thought of this passage a lot lately. You know, it came to my mind of thinking of a quote from A .W. Tozer, and if I can paraphrase it poorly, he said something to the effect that if every problem in our life, in our church life, can be attributed to a problem and an attribute or nature of God, that somehow we're missing an attribute of God, a nature, something about the nature of God.

And if you focus on, if I can use the term here, the brotherhood of the Trinity that's presented in John 17, and our command to represent that attribute of God, it changes a lot of the ways of your thinking.

It changes your view of the church. It changes your view of Christianity. With that in mind, read, here's the verse in John 17. I'll just jump in. Now they know, now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hath given me are thine.

For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me, and they have received them and have known surely that I come out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me. I pray for them.

I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hath given me, for they are thine, and all mine are thine, and thine are mine, and I am glorified in them. So everything that I have is yours. Everything you have is mine.

And then he prays a little bit. I should have cut off a little earlier. May they be one in that same way. He goes on, neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word.

This is the talking about us receiving the word through the scriptures to our day. That they may all be one, to what degree, Lord? As thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us.

Why? That the world may believe that thou hadst sent me. It's a testimony. He stakes his testimony. Our Lord stakes his testimony on this issue, and so I think it's something for us to take very seriously.

Early Church Warnings Against Schism

Since we've been going through the whole church history, I have a few quotes from the early church, and I'm giving them to you here. And one is from Irenaeus, a bishop in France, Lyons, France, around the year 150.

And he has a very interesting quote here about the desire to break apart and start different churches. I'm going to give it to you. He says, speaking of the judgment, he says, he shall also judge those who give rise to sexism, splits, who are destitute of the love of God, and who look to their own special advantage rather than to the unity of the church, and who for trifling reasons, or any kind of reasons which occur to them, cut in pieces and divide the great and glorious body of Christ, and so far as in them lies positively destroy it.

Listen how he goes on. Men who parade of peace, they talk about peace, while they give rise to war, and do in truth strain out a gnat, but swallow a camel. Listen to this, for no reformation of so great importance can be effected by them as will compensate for the mischief arising from their schism, from their church split.

He shall also judge all those who are beyond the pale of the truth, that is who are outside the church, but he himself shall be judged by no one, for to him all things are consistent, for he has a full faith in one God.

He goes on and talks about the one faith. He also talks about the importance of the church as the way he sees it. Now you can beg the question, does that lead to Roman Catholicism? To its extreme it does.

We feel, just like in the book of Revelation, there does come a time when Jesus seems to make it clear that a church has lost its lampstand. There seems to be a time that that happens. But with the wrong balance, or with an imbalance, I think we can see, do we even value the whole idea of the concept of a unified church the way I think the early church did, and more importantly the way Jesus did?

There's a quote here by Cyprian that I left here because it's such an interesting quote. You can kind of put it into our time to come. It's in year 250, and they're getting into a split over rebaptism, and particularly here about baptizing heretics, do you rebaptize them or not?

And they get into a split. He gets into this big division with these different priests and things, and he says this in his attitude of this back and forth dialogue that they keep giving to each other.

And he says this, These things of the pure conscience of my mind, and of my confidence in my Lord and my God, I have written at length. Here it is. You have my letter, and I yours. In the day of judgment, before the tribunal of Christ, both will be read.

Ouch. You know, and I think if we would keep that perspective, and every time we send an email, and every time we send our rebukes to one another, perhaps that would be a safer place for it to be. Every one of these words will be written, will be said, will be spoken in the tribunal of God.

And so I think it's good to keep that in mind. Okay, so let's bring it up to the Dutch in Holland there. I thought I would just give a little bit again about some of the differences of the cultures that were in Holland, because a lot of the original splits came from a differences of two different people groups.

Flemish and Frisian Cultural Divisions

They were the Frisians and the Flemish. And these different people groups, we see kind of, I'm a bad artist here. The Frisians were up in the north, and the Flemish came from south from Belgium. And I have a little bit here of the history.

Even this whole division. You know how it is when, today with the Civil War, I mean I don't know if you all have been down in the south, you're all from the south, but I mean some people have still not quite got over the whole Civil War thing.

I mean, seriously, like my dad has never quite got over the Civil War thing. For instance, when I came up to Pennsylvania, he said, Dean, that's the north. And I said, well yeah, well dad, you know, isn't Pennsylvania really the north?

And he said with all seriousness, son, doesn't Gettysburg mean anything to you? He was dead serious. He wasn't kidding. When we visited New York City, we took a little bus tour. He wouldn't get out of the bus to go see Grant's Tomb.

Not doing it. I mean, some people never quite get over those things is what I'm trying to say. When I was in Scotland, I noticed people still weren't getting over the whole Scottish-English type of thing.

People carry these things for a long time. I wonder, with some of these big disputes and things and wars between the Flemish and the Frisians and the different people groups, is some of that to play? I don't know.

But you wonder. Here's some of the wars and things that focus right around that era. The Dutch War of Independence from Spain is frequently called the 80-Year War. They had this whole 80-Year War, and it ended the same as the 30-Year War on the same date, but they kind of got started a little earlier in that.

However, only the first, it says here, the first 50 years were uniquely a war between Spain and the Netherlands. So when you go through the Martyr's Mirror and you see all that Spanish, talk about the Spanish this and Spanish that, and I thought we were in Holland, why do we keep talking about the Spaniards?

Why do they have the Spanish Inquisition in Holland? It's because of this huge fleet of Navy fleet and all the attackings of the Spanish imperialism that had got up to this area. During the last 30 years, the conflict between Spain and the Netherlands was submerged in the general European War that became known as the 30-Year War.

And so they eventually began to end that. They finally had their Declaration of Independence sort of on 26th of July, 1581, and they wanted their independence against the Spanish people. William of Orange, the first, becomes kind of an important figure.

Don't get him confused in history with William and Mary, who later in the late 1600s came over to England. This is one of the first of William of Orange helped to cause more of this independence from the Spanish, and in particular, a war that happened in that day.

The founder of the Dutch royal family, when you hear all that stuff, it's still in the Buckingham Palace and all that's still to the day. The founder of the Dutch royal family led the Dutch during the first part of the war following the death of this guy here, Egmont of Hoorn, in 1568.

The very first years were a success for the Spanish troops. However, the Dutch countered subsequent sieges in Holland, back and forth. The Spanish kings lost control of Netherlands after a sack on Antwerp.

Antwerp was one of the main cities, or perhaps the main city of Belgium, one of them, and they had a main attacking of Antwerp and were able to take Antwerp. And so it looked like for a while, hey, maybe Holland was going to get this.

The Spanish kings lost control of the Netherlands and the sack of Antwerp by a mutant, a mutating Spanish soldiers and killed over 10 ,000 inhabitants. The conservative Catholics in the south and the east supported the Spanish.

The Spanish recaptured Antwerp and other Flemish and Dutch cities. And when this happened, the fall of Antwerp was a pretty significant thing, a pretty significant war. It caused this whole southern area, Belgium and all that, south of Holland, to be taken over strongly by the Catholics and this caused a huge migration of the Flemish into Holland.

And that caused then this whole people group in Holland, which led to some of these divisions I think that perhaps we have here. You can see my little map on page three. There's classically Frisia, the very upper end there, and some of those things.

The Frisians, a language of culture of most of the people who lived in the area now known as Holland, were originally Frisian. It was a sparsely populated area known as West Frisian, I guess one of the districts now.

As Frankish settlements progressed, the Frisians migrated away or were absorbed and the area quickly became Dutch. And now the Flemish, like I just said, are Dutch-speaking inhabitants of Belgium where they are mostly found in the northern regions of Flanders.

They are one of the two principal cultural linguistic groups of Belgium. And so that's the different people group. Flemish Mennonites, this is from the Mennonite Encyclopedia, in order to escape from the most oppressive persecution had immigrated or fled from Belgium and especially from Flanders.

Hence they were usually called Flemish to the Netherlands. Many of them settled in the Dutch province of Friesland. And the Dutch, the encyclopedia gives these cultural difference. Often the Frisians were offended by the Flemish way of living and dressing.

And the later resented, excuse me, sorry I have a little mess up there. They were offended by, okay, let me scratch that. The area here in Belgium was more of a to-do area. They were more rich. They were more a well-to-do area.

The bourgeois of this area was more in the southern. The Frisians were more the farmers, the simpletons and that type of thing. And there seemed to be some different cultural differences that even the Mennonite Encyclopedia talk about.

The Flemish were actually fine dressers. The Belgian people were fancy dressers and they liked fancy food and fancy dress. And it says that the Frisians had though inside their house some of the things that came out in the dispute, their furnishings, their linens and things like that were spoken of as being fancy to them.

And that caused some offenses back and forth. And again, just some of those little differences there. So as given to our rules, I'm going to try to go through here and look at some of these things. Here's our first couple of rules.

Unity Without Judgmentalism

Our first one was have salt within yourself and peace with one another. Rule number one, have a strong world changing conviction without being judgmental. Rule number one, have a strong world changing convictions without being judgmental.

But now we're mixing two cultures together. Rule number two, when different cultures form into a church, all must be willing to bend and give up as many of their own cultural sins and weaknesses. This is my take on it.

There's different ways to look at this. Either you can say when you come into an area, you should just accept the culture of the area or you should say that the church is there to represent a Christian culture in their area.

I have a scripture that I gave you. I have a scripture that I think applies. When Paul was speaking to Titus and they were wondering how to evangelize into the Cretans, he gives us this passage in Titus chapter 1 verse 12.

Speaking of the cultural behaviors of the Cretans, he says this, if you remember this shocking verse in the Bible. He says, of one of themselves, even a prophet of their own said, this is Paul speaking, the Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, slow bellies.

And he says, this witness is true. So that's the way Cretans are. He's telling you they're evil beasts, they're slow bellies, I mean they're passionate people, they're always liars. And so what do you do with the culture that's like that?

Well, you have to, do you have to say, well, you got to understand their culture and bend their culture, you know, let them be. No. Paul says, this witness is true, wherefore rebuke them sharply that they may be sound in the faith.

And so we do have cultural weaknesses, we all do. I think that the scriptural thing to do, and I'll just throw this out and you can differ with me, is for us to not make excuses for each of our cultural weaknesses, but be able to let our different cultures help each other to see those weaknesses and be able to lay those down, and so that we can have a unified body together.

But that was the way it was done here, and I think some of these cultural differences weren't able to look at that. But, okay, turn the page. Before we touch this period now, I want you to understand, like I said just a minute ago, when you talk about history, wars, or churches, or that type of thing, you get a wrong idea of what the people were like at that time.

And I want you to look over the martyrs that I just gave you just a quick sampling of. I want you to look at that. And I want you to understand something from this period. That all of this, from, I don't know, well, yeah, about from here to here, all of this in the martyr's mirror happened during this time period.

So let's keep that in mind as we look at some of these debates and fights that these were very passionate people that were taking the word of God and trying to live it out in their different places. And so, you know, think about that.

Here's the, I just have this burning of this lady in Daventer in 1544, the burning of six brothers in 1549. Here this Joris Whiff who started to be a, he was a mayor who became a Christian brother and he was killed in 1558.

And we have a burning of Hendrix Imkins who, it was a miraculous thing where they saw all these fire and things glowing and that type of thing in 1562. And even as late as 1572, we see this burning of all these brothers and sisters there for their faith.

And so I want you to keep that in mind as we go through, that while the elders were having these meetings, the brothers and sisters were living faithfully for Christ in many places all around this area.

Questioning the Questions

Number three, question the questions. You know, I think this is very important. And so I'm not repeat it, but I'm going to say it here at the beginning. When you begin to go into a questioning mode, you tend to enter somebody's world, somebody's worldview.

And you have to be very careful with that. I noticed the example of Jesus being very important in this, that he would often just throw back the question. I don't think he was just trying to be smart. I don't believe our Lord would have done that.

But I don't think he would allow himself to enter in a lot of the debates because he knew by walking into that debate, you enter into their worldview. And I'm afraid that's what happened here several times.

Another example I'll just give you before I start mentioning some of these. I remember once I was in a library and I saw a Life magazine there. And it was called A Pen in the Hand of God. It was an interview with Mother Teresa from the 1960s.

And it caught my attention. I picked it up and there was something, never mind what you think of Mother Teresa, but there was something in there that was very impressive. During the 1960s, the Roman Catholics were really trying to say that, hey, we're going to finally have women ordination.

And so the women liberation movement and people were starting to get excited and starting to want to stand. And surely we're going to start to have women priests. And so this interviewer was going to Mother Teresa and trying to get her into a debate on women's lib.

Well, Mother Teresa, the interviewer was saying, you are a leader of women. Notice the frame being formed. And obviously you go to the heads of state. You have all those things that you say. Nowadays in the Roman Catholic Church, there's a big debate on should Roman Catholics have women priests.

And so since you're a leader of women, I'm wondering, Mother Teresa, how do you feel? Her answer was beautiful. She simply said, I don't think that way. Wow, I don't think that way. And she questioned the question.

And when we get into these theological debates, you'll find yourself sometimes and you'll experience this. You'll be in the middle of it and you realize you're so deep that somehow we're getting the right answer to the wrong questions.

Somehow we need to back up. And I think sometimes these brothers should have done that. Question the question is number three. Be sure to question the question. Rule number four, understand that passionate people do passionate things.

You want to be in an on fire, amen, brother church? Then you're going to have amen, on fire, brother people who do passionate things. And that goes with the territory. You want to be in a dead church?

Guess what? You're probably not going to have church splits. So that's no excuse for church splits. Don't get me wrong. But it does go with the territory. I appreciate this quote from Cornelius Dick in his Mennonite history.

He says, in church maturity, decisions have to be made and boundaries have to be discussed. And then Cornelius Dick says, we have already seen how extreme positions arose with David Joris beliefs in prophecy and Adam pastor's tendency towards Unitarianism.

We talked about him yesterday. They had to deal with those things, right? Could they be in the same community with these people who had that big of variances? Answer, no. It was over the top, right? Could you be in the same church with Jan van Leyden?

No. Somewhere you needed to draw some lines, right? So, okay, you have to do that. He's given you that. And how these movements were rejected by the main body under Minow's leadership. But where do you stop?

When you begin to separate from those with whom you disagree, much of the history of the Mennonites in the Netherlands from 1555 to 1650 show that there was no clear and simple answer to this question.

Community, Brotherhood, and the Kingdom of God

Where do you stop? Intrinsic to Anabaptist theology, and I think it's very important that it is, is the concept of community and brotherhood. Intrinsic to that is there. And so our understanding of coming together and being a people called out of this world, called into a church, it makes us ask the question, well, what is it like to be this family?

What is it like to be this city in the kingdom of God? It is different than the invisible view of the church, which the evangelicals propagate. And so it's going to have some challenges. And so I want us to hear some of these challenges.

But nevertheless, I do believe that the concept of the brotherhood, the family, the city in the kingdom of God, the community understanding is very solid in any kind of representation of Anabaptist theology.

And from extreme views. I've read things from very liberal scholars or writers who would still hold to this view even in their own right, in their own way. It's an important concept in early Anabaptist issues.

Okay. So now we've learned some of the difference between the Frisians and the Flemish and talked about those things. And so let's go now to passion, understand that passionate people do passionate things.

And let's get into the first biggie. Cornelius Dick says, those people who were willing to face death for their faith were also ready to break fellowship with brothers or sisters if they thought them wrong.

Right. You ever been in a first generation church where everybody there has either left one church or another church? That's all I've ever been in. Yeah. It happens that way. You know, so that happens.

Okay. All right. Here's the story. A man by the name of Sawin Rutgers, you don't have to remember his name. Just remember this poor guy did something wrong in his church that got his minister upset with him and he ended up being called to be excommunicated.

His, he was, he went to the famous church of Emden, which if you remember right at the very tip of Holland, getting right into Germany, way up north there is Emden, which was a big area of debates. And they had debates there with the reformers.

And that one time there was 124 sessions of a debate with the reformers up in this area. It's a big debating area. But it was also the place where Leonard Bowens was from. You remember him from yesterday?

He was that guy who went and baptized over 10 ,000 people, the preacher who was everywhere. Well, he was there and he started to say, he did something wrong. History did not let us know what he did wrong, but he also said, we're going to ban him.

And, but the thing is we want his wife to ban him as well. If you're going to shun somebody, I don't want this man and wife thing living together. So I think she should leave the house and go away. What do you think?

If you're going to shun, she's a Christian, right? She's a Christian. She's a member of the church even, but now he's not. Well, where is the family? What did Jesus say? Here are my brothers, my sister, or, you know, my, he who does the will of my father, my brother, my sister, my mother.

So the issue was there. What do you do? What do you think? What do you think? Does she move out of house and home? Go live in the pastor's, you know, we'll put a little dowdy house over here for her and let her, you know, live there.

Or do they try to work this out in the house? What do you do with this situation? You separate him? Okay. Okay. All right. Jacob, separate him. Ooh, okay. Jacob says you put a, draw a house on him. That's the household.

Okay. But he's not, he's, he's been turned over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh. And she's going to just be having tea with him? Oh, Lucas brings up the scripture. And wife, it says there, right?

The point is to bring him back to the church. The whole point of shunning, you mean, is for reconciliation. Good. So where are you going with that? Very good. How can you be in 1 Corinthians chapter 6, 7, excuse me, 1 Corinthians chapter 7, how could you win him without a word if you're not living with him?

Yeah, good. Very good. All right. So these were the things they were dealing with. And it kind of went from bad to worse. He started saying things about it. And they finally ended up writing a letter to Menno Simons.

Menno Simons said, let's be gentle with this situation. And Leonard Bowen said, no, we're going to have this shunning. The church said, no, I, the whole church got in on this. And, and everybody started to get a little upset.

And, and the whole thing led to kind of a big split. And it got worse, and it got worse, and it got worse. Well, they end up getting Dirk Phillips, remember him from yesterday? Dirk Phillips in on it.

And he's very much of kind of a, a dogmatist, a, a, you know, he talks about these things very much. And he got called in on the thing as well. Well, things then kind of got worse and worse. And they end up calling a meeting to discuss this matter.

I'm afraid we're going to have to work this thing out. It's gotten big. So they called a little meeting together in Friesland in 1557. And they decided, and now Leonard Bowens and Dirk Phillips had brought Menno Simons to his side.

And so finally they said, that's it. We're going to make a rule for all of our churches that you have to kick them out. She's got to leave. She's got to leave the home. And so the first biggie was the idea, she's out of there.

Whew, some of the brothers here at the church were like, I don't think so. And they were very concerned. And so this started to cause a division. And, but Menno and Dirk and some of those brothers didn't like their, they, we decided, the church has decided we need to go with this now.

And it got, I'm afraid it got worse. And number, rule number five is name calling is not good. In the middle of a church dispute, name calling is not good. Bowens, unfortunately, immediately calls the people that broke off.

I didn't say that. These people were so upset about it. He said, we're not going to fellowship with you. And Bowens immediately started calling them, quote, the garbage wagon. That's not good. Name calling, number five, rule number five is not good.

All right, it got worse. Rule number six, in the middle of a big church dispute like this, stop, take a deep breath and don't put fuel to the fire. All right, you knew things were going to go bad and it's going to get worse.

And this, it got worse. In the spring of 1557, Menno, Simons, okay, they met there. And then after that, they had another meeting where they met down in the city of Strasburg. And people from all over Germany, southern Germany, and particularly northern Germany, which is where the fellowship here was, met to discuss what they were going to do about it.

Two of the brothers, simple brothers from a little town of Mützen-Glaubach in certain areas of northern Germany, started sending letters to say, I don't think this is right. Our conscience is against this.

As a matter of fact, I would rather be excommunicated than do something like this. I really think this is a bad idea. Interestingly enough, it's Mützen-Glaubach, which I, of course, had no idea, where I got converted way up there in north Germany when my wife and I decided to kneel and give our lives totally to Christ.

Little did I know that was a little town of Mützen-Glaubach. Anyway, in this little town, they're sending in different, mainly north Germans and different people are sending that. And they send a letter to Menno saying, hey, can we talk about this?

I don't think this is a good thing, this decision that you have made. Menno, he wrote a letter. He wrote, as a matter of fact, a little work on the thorough explanation and account of excommunication.

They went back and forth. They told Menno in his letter that they would rather be excommunicated themselves than go along with his extreme and unchristlike way of putting people out of the Lord's commune.

Avoiding Cliques and Secret Arrangements

Number seven, rule. There's no situation bad enough that you can't make it worse. I remember we talked about in the days before, you think that's as bad as it can get, it can get worse. Menno then wrote a reply.

And he wrote a reply, and the name of the reply was called, A Thorough Answer, Full of Instruction and Counsel to Zils and Lambert, those were the guys who were complaining, undeserved and unjust accusation, their slander and bitter name-calling about our position, which is, as we believe, the true teaching of the holy apostles in regard to excommunication and shunning.

Soon after, Dirk Philips, remember him, Leonard Bowens, the big evangelist, traveled south along the Rhine through Köln, through Müschenglaubach, through south to North Germany and all these different areas, unfortunately with a letter saying that they were excommunicating all of these churches who disagree with him.

And particularly that would have been the North German churches. Tacitly, I tried to find last night the exact words and see, did it include the Swiss brethren? And Peter Hoover in his book, where I got some of that story, says all the North Germans and the Swiss brethren, and he did specifically mention the North Germans, but I don't know if he specifically mentioned the Swiss brethren, I don't know if you know, Brother Steve, but it was, at least tacitly, if you disagree with this view, you're out.

And that's unfortunate, and that was one of the first biggies of the splits of the people up there. All right, so they go now, and the next rule is, don't ever let your group become a clique. You know how we talked about there being these different cultures, but what we just saw up here maybe couldn't really be called a culture.

Probably a lot of these were Frisians, but now we have the issue of these Flemish are starting to pour in from the persecuted area of Belgium, and they're starting to come in to the church, and there is, you gotta know what to do with them.

Well, the Dutch church now had been a little bit organized. There in Holland, that's such a bad, there in Holland, they ended up with four of the main churches having a bit of a conference almost. They got together and they were able to decide, help the poor together, decide ordinations together, one ordained person could go to the other things, and they had this little conference.