Anabaptist History (Day 1) Welcome — Dean Taylor

Well, how's everybody's day been so far? It's been a blessing. Well, I'm Dean Taylor. I'm really excited about this course. I've dreamt about doing something like this for a long time. So you've signed up for Anabaptist History, and I think that's incredible.

So what I'm going to do is just go through, make sure we have everybody. There was one little mix-up with the class. They had two classes in the same room. So let me just make sure that everybody is here that's supposed to be here.

So you did all sign up for Anabaptist History, and that's why you're here, right? Amen. They had Stephen Copeland's ministry class is scheduled for 2 .08 as well. So, okay. All right. Just for a couple preliminaries here to start off the class with, I had it for textbooks to get.

Anybody bought the textbooks yet? Yeah? I had these two. And you know, the whole picking of a textbook is an interesting thing. I mean, they're all tainted one way or the other, and I guess so are we, but you just kind of have to read through that.

But I found these two to be pretty interesting, and this cup on the cross was actually even a little surprising. It even has some nice appendixes in the back that give some different information about different documents and things like this.

This one, this Mennonite history book by Cornelius Dick, it does better going into Russia and Holland and that type of thing, where a lot of the books with just a Swiss brother and emphasis doesn't cover.

So, I think you'll like this book as well. It covers an area, you know, who are the Mennonites in Canada? Who are these, you know, those types of thing. It kind of spells out some of that. And then, of course, the Martyr's Mirror.

The Martyrs’ Mirror as a Living History

Now, if you don't have a Martyr's Mirror, this is online. And so, I think that most of the things that you can get can get out of here. But I will say, you know, what kind of self-respecting Anabaptist doesn't have a Martyr's Mirror?

But if you don't have one, this would be a good time to get one. And if you do, if you don't, but I understand it's expensive, and I don't know what, what are they charging for it now? 39 bucks. How many?

39. 39 bucks, oh, come on. Well, 39 bucks. And, well, hopefully we're gonna do this, not so much textbook, but I'm gonna try to start each day with stories. I'm a storyteller. And I like to tell history like stories, and not just a bunch of boring dates and things.

Yeah, they had to switch class there. And so, in telling these stories, I want this Martyr's Mirror to become a little more alive to you, instead of just kind of the book that you press your flowers with, and things like that.

So, I think that would be good for us. So, I'm gonna pass out, since I see you don't have a, I'm gonna pass out the Introduction to the Martyr's Mirror. And we're gonna read that today. I think it has some good words for us today.

There you go. We won't read it quite yet. Just don't look yet. If you have your Martyr's Mirror handy, then it's page eight in your Martyr's Mirror. That's it. Okay, and what we're gonna do is, I'm gonna first, as I was thinking about how do you start a class that you're gonna spend five weeks talking about Anabaptist history.

And I started thinking, I gotta think of some particular Anabaptist in history that I can make a story from, and then go from there. And I started thinking of one in the past. I thought of some of the famous ones.

And then I started thinking, well, now I need something kind of modern. And then I thought, hey, I should give my own testimony. And so I'm gonna tell you a little bit about myself. Then I would like to know, after I'm finished, you can prepare thinking of this, just a little bit about yourself.

And then I'd also like to know what your heritage background is. Do you come from an Amish background? Do you come from a Mennonite background, a Russian Mennonite background? And that kind of a thing.

So I think that's gonna make our dynamics more interesting as we look through the history. And it also can make sure I hit a particular area as we go through this. But, so before we get started, though, let's start with prayer.

Dear Heavenly Father, we come to you, the beginning of this survey of history in the name of Jesus Christ. It is you that we want to lift up, Jesus. We don't wanna lift up a man, a denomination, any kind of a people, but we wanna see what you have done within your servants through the ages.

And dear God, we want to be a part of that thing that you want to do here on earth. And so Lord, we just commit these five weeks to you. We commit our hearts to you again, Lord, just to say, Lord, we read these things and we say, God, do it again.

Do it again in our generation. Do it again in our life. And let these brothers and sisters and children and all their faith that has shined so brightly before us inspire us to keep the faith in our generation.

From Nominal Christianity to a Mennonite Church

It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen. I can remember the very first Mennonite church I ever went to. I was starting to look through Mennonite literature and things like that in the army. And matter of fact, the first time I heard the word Mennonite, I thought it was perhaps like a tribe of Israel.

You know, you got your Medianites and your Mennonites and that type of thing. Okay, so I finally got past that and I started studying more over there in Germany. There was this kind of a radical bookstore that had some impressive stuff and that's where I got some of those things.

And while I was there, we started reading about the Mennonites and one time I was driving around in the streets of Germany with a friend of mine, a couple that also got out of the army with us. And as we were there, we were just swerving through.

Actually, we were just driving around to talk what are we gonna do with our life kind of thing. I still ask those questions. But anyway, we keep driving around and as we're driving around, all of a sudden, I said, stop the car.

He said, why? So he stopped his little Fiat and he said, that said Mennonite and Kirsha. He says, yeah. I said, I don't know, but I'm thinking that's a Mennonite church. So I said, all right, well, what are we gonna do?

I don't know, well, let's go in. So it was like a midweek or something like that and the lights were on upstairs. It was a big church. So we pulled the car off, two little couples. We got out and we went over and we found the catacombs through the, it's a modern church, and got to this, it was a youth gathering, probably a room about the size of this room.

There was a youth gathering and they're all in there and we walk in the door, these American soldiers, we walk in the door and they looked at us and we said, you're Mennonites. And you can imagine what their response was.

So what? And that response has been a response that I think has continued on way too much. There's a non-appreciation of a heritage, there's a non-understanding of the heritage and there's a non-understanding of some of the things that I think are much more like Christ, which I think it makes it so much more important.

Why is it even important? Because I think it's more like Christ. So let me tell you a little bit of how I got to that little Mennonite church. I was raised a nominal Methodist and then later in my life, because of a friend of mine, there was this church that had lots of pizza parties and football games and things.

So I joined the Baptist church in town, the Southern Baptist. And as I was there in the Southern Baptist, I had an understanding of faith, which I think is very common in American evangelicalism and I think it's very common amongst our people by corruption, by us losing the things that are true to us.

And that is, I believed in a sinner's prayer salvation. Do you know what I mean by sinner's prayer salvations? Who can give me an idea? You've heard that term. Yeah. Exactly. Forever. Exactly. So that was my concept of Christianity.

Now, I was sincere, I was a young man. The preachers were always good preachers. But my understanding of what was given to me of Christianity was, if I understood the atonement for a moment, for that moment, if I understood that atonement for that moment, that is it, that's Christianity, my fate is sealed for all of eternity.

And although no one would outwardly, well, yeah, we did say, we called it fire insurance, we would use that terminology, actually, without apology. And why I think that's so detrimental to the church is because it really destroys Christianity from its core.

It becomes just a sort of head knowledge, this sort of thing in your mind. So, anyway, like, I was very patriotic. My father's real denomination was probably Republican. And as he raised that way, I was very patriotic.

I actually very much enjoyed being in the Army. And as I joined the Army, I was a musician in the Army. I mean, I was a musician in high school. I met my wife in high school in the high school band. And I decided, well, I didn't know what I was gonna do with my life, so I joined the Army band and became a musician.

Unfortunately, the kind of music that I played led into more and more things. I ended up in a Army rock band, using your tax dollars for things like that. And also, there's different assignments that the band would do, traveling around Europe.

And I got a European assignment, and that's where we sent. Well, I was sent to. My wife got sent over just as a civilian. But we thought, hey, we'll just spend the rest of our life in the Army, not have any children, and live this life.

And then, so she decided to join the Army, too. Left from Germany, went to basic training, and came back and joined me in the Army band as well. So there we were, young couple, 21 years old in the Army band.

But something happened. When she moved into the apartment, we got a double-sized apartment, and I was in this really nice valley. And so for the first time in my life, I was away from the television.

I mean, my entire life, I was in front of the television. I mean, it was like a TV dinner in front of the television. It was like, that was our little family thing, was there on the TV. I mean, you know.

So there, for the first time, that noise was cut off. And it was interesting. It did something to me. And it made me start doing things like read. I had never read before in my life. I was not a reader.

I cheated through high school, got the Cliff Notes or something, and just trying to find my way through. But now, suddenly, I started to have questions. And that's the way we should read. And that's the way we should read through this Anabaptist history class and all your classes.

Read with questions. I wonder, what about this? I wonder about that. Just reading for reading's sake is really pretty boring. But when you're reading to ask questions, it does something to you. It goes deeper.

Because really, the answer is in the questions that you're asking. We're gonna see that over and over again. Well, it wasn't long that I was there that our, first of all, that rock music and the things that we did led to our life more and more in a very bad way.

And since you already knew the songs to play for the troops, we started into playing in these clubs around the way, and it was terrible. And it began, I just began to wrestle with the fact that all along, I was going to my church, all along living this double life.

But everybody was blessing me and saying how great it was because I was doing it for the Army. But yet, there was something inside of me that was saying, this is not real. This is not real. It's just a head Christianity.

So the Germans call something Fasching. It's like a Mardi Gras for the Germans. It was way up in Meuchenglaubach, Germany, way up north Germany. And while we were in there, it was this terrible decadence of all that.

I just, Tonya and I went into our hotel room that night and said, you know, this thing that we're calling Christianity, it just doesn't make sense. And we're living this double life. And we're gonna either need to just reject Christianity or take it with no compromise.

So we got on our knees, thanks be to God, in that hotel room that night, and both of us totally surrendered our lives to Christ and said, and the thing that we said was no compromise. It's going to be God.

Taking Jesus’ Words Literally

It's just him, and we're gonna stop this double life. Well, the first thing that we did as we, the music challenged us, so we quickly got out of the rock band, which was easy. You know, there's a line of people waiting to be in something like that, so that was easy.

So there were other musician jobs we could be in, so we were in that. But then I'll never forget the time that I opened up the Bible. We had started reading in bed, and I said, Tonya, let me read this to you.

And it was sort of like, you know, Josiah, how he went into the temple there and found the law. I said, I don't know. But see what you think of this. I mean, what do you, okay. So I started, I picked up the Bible, and I said, okay, listen, just listen.

You have heard that it has been said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you that you resist not evil. But whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.

And if a man will sue thee at the law and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, you go with him twain. Give to him that asketh, and for him that would borrow of thee, turn not thou away.

You have heard that it has been said, thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, love your enemy, bless them that curse you, and do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you.

That you may be the children of your father, which is in heaven. For he maketh his son to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love them which love you, what reward have you?

Do not even the publicans do the same? And if you salute your brethren only, what do you more than others? Do not even the publicans so? I close the Bible. I said, so what do you think of that? She said, well, it seems pretty simple, doesn't it?

I mean, I said, yeah, it seems simple, but we're in the army. And for the first time in my life, I was confronted with the fact that my entire world was contrary to the teachings of Jesus Christ. And that's where I found myself in a huge crisis.

Can someone get that door, that angel music in the back sounds beautiful, but I'll start listening to it. But I found myself at crisis, and with the fact that of looking at these words of Jesus, and saying, what if he meant those things?

I mean, you know, I thought of my salvation just as sort of a sinner's prayer, but now, suddenly, if the word was to become a blueprint for me, a model for me, then that changed my life. From there, we began the, I talked to a chaplain, and he gave me a book written by the head of the chaplain corps, and the head of the chaplain corps explaining what it meant, how you could have a just war theory.

And as I read through that book, it was one of the first books I'd completed, especially a theology book, certainly was the first book. I got to the end of that book, and I was a bit scared. Because, you see, when I felt that the theologians and all the big guys knew what they were talking about, when I thought, well, they had this thing figured out that we've been going to war and killing people for thousands of years.

But when I read their reasonings, it frankly scared me. I thought, well, these are terrible reasons. These are weak reasons. How can you just negate the plain words of Christ with, well, the end justify the means?

So I began to search more. At this time, there was a man growing in popularity. This is by the name of Saddam Hussein. And he started to rise in power, and I was already talking to some friends there, Christian friends at work, at the army, and then things began to kind of nag on me more and more.

And then I started to think about a scene that happened a year before this. I went to Berlin twice. Once was in the year 1988, and when Tanya was in basic training, my wife Tanya. When I was in basic training, I went there, and while I was in Berlin, it was filled with military things and all the boboir and the Russian soldiers and the East German communist soldiers that are pointing their guns at you and all this, and it was very intimidating.

But then I was going back in 1989 when Tanya got out of the army, and I was there, and does anybody know what happened in Berlin in 1989? That was all before your time. Any of y 'all born yet? All right, you're all born.

All right, what happened? The wall fell down, and I was there. And it was really incredible, because I was there just the year before, but now I was standing at that wall, and these people had knocked holes in the wall, you know, chipping it away, and guys were having these battering rams, and they were knocking it in and all this type of thing, and they were making these big holes in the wall.

And then these communists and East German Russian guys were putting their hands through the holes in the wall, asking to kiss me through the holes in the wall, handing champagne through the holes in the wall, and saying, my brother, and Frieden, and peace, and that type of thing.

And it was a very powerful moment. But the thing that stunned me was this. I just simply asked the question, what changed? And something about that moment made me think of the kingdoms of this earth in a lot different way.

What changed? Last year, I could have been called on to shoot this guy. This year, he's kissing me through a hole in the wall. You know what I mean? There's a big difference there. What changed? A few politicians got together in Washington, and Moscow, and Berlin, and suddenly, my enemy is my friend.

And that bothered me. Because as I began to study Christ more, I realized that this kingdom that he came to bring in was beyond all these things. It had already knocked down all those walls. And then now those people were my brothers now in Christ, if they were my brothers in Christ, but nonetheless, even my enemies, and not to be someone to be shot.

Conscientious Objection and Christian Nonresistance

So, as I began to study that and look at that, I got to the point, now the Persian Gulf War, I gotta speed this up a little bit, the Persian Gulf War is going on. It's starting to get more heated up. And I didn't know what to do, so I sent a letter to one of the books that I was reading.

This was before email and all that, you know. I sent a letter to one of the books that I'm reading and saying, hey, we're two soldiers. We don't know what to do. We're gonna go AWOL help. And fortunately, they sent that to the Mennonite Central Committee.

Mennonite Central Committee sent that to two counselors, Andre and Kathy Stoner, who were living over in Germany at the time, and they really were instrumental in helping us with the process of becoming conscientious objectors.

And that was very much of a learning time for me. But now something happened. And this is what I think is the Anabaptist difference. This is what I think is the Christ following difference. It's as if Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, was opening up the word and just simply said, I mean it.

I mean that. And that's the difference. That is the difference. When this becomes something that's not a meditation, it's not something that you just stow away somewhere or it's not something that just makes you feel guilty and then you confess your sins and feel better.

It's a design for life. It's a whole way, endued by the Holy Spirit, being born again from above causes these things to occur, and he means it. And so that was powerful for me. Make a long story short, you have to do certain things when you become a conscious objector.

I first had to face the commander, and he saluted and I gave him the regulations about becoming a conscious objector. And then you had to go to a chaplain, you had to go to a psychiatrist, which is a funny story, I could tell you sometime.

Maybe I'll tell it later. And then you go to, finally you go to this court hearing, and the court hearing is powerful because they challenge every little thing about trying to look at inconsistencies with you.

And he was a captain who was in charge of asking all these questions. And that was interesting because beforehand, the Midnight Central Committee set us this little book on how to answer those questions that they typically ask you.

And I got a little group, we had shared our faith with another couple, and they were getting excited and wanted out of the army too. And I said, wait a minute. The scripture says, when you are brought before magistrate, you will not prepare beforehand what you shall say, but the Holy Spirit would give you utterance.

Let's claim that promise and go in, and that's what we did. We just testified and gave our testimony of Christ to that man at the table, the judge there, so to speak, who was running the hearing. And as we did that, we each individually did that, and it was eight months until the beginning of the process to the end of the process till we found out it was all over.

And here's what happened. The war was now over. America, the first Persian Gulf War, they went in, went out, it was all over. And we had lots of stories in between there. Maybe I'll intersperse them throughout this five weeks, but it's now the war's over, and they're calling us up into this little room, this tiny little room, a quarter of the size of this room.

And the same lawyer who was there running the court hearing was there with four manila envelopes on his desk. And he said, okay. He said, I have the results of your conscientious objector application here on my desk.

He says, but listen, the war's over. I mean, you know, I have the authority just for you to say, forget this. You know, you have a nice job, you're all young, you know, go, you know, go, you know, I have the authority just to be able to say that, and you go on from there.

So I, you know, look, I knew they didn't. So I said, no, sir, you know, we're, Phil, the Lord wants us to do this, we're gonna go on. He said, well, I thought that's what you were gonna say. He said, well, I wanna tell you, you've all been approved of conscientious objector discharge.

We got honorable discharges, because we, you know, we're approved. And so we had kind of celebrated in our military way, you know, and he stopped us, he said, but wait, there's something I wanna tell you.

Okay, the suspense was really big. He says, I, too, now am getting out of the Army for the very same reason. And we're like, whoa. It was one of those whoa moments of life, you know what I mean? I mean, I couldn't believe it.

I mean, and I thought about it, you know, what if during those court hearings, I would have said, well, my church believes in, you know, or I think this and that, you know, and I'd, oh, this isn't for everybody or whatever.

No, but it was a reality in our life, it was reality in my wife's life, it was reality in Rick and Don's life of testifying of what Christ was doing in our life, and that we were wanting to put the words of Jesus into reality, and it moved this man who was running the actual court hearing.

Why History Matters to Christian Discipleship

So, after that, it's been a journey. I've tried to live that idea that it's about Jesus, and it's about believing that he meant every word that he said. During that time, that interim time of getting out of the Army, I was kinda lonely.

Didn't have much of a church. Our Baptist church told us, I think you'd be more comfortable worshiping elsewhere, was his literal words, and so, history became to be a bit of a church for me for a while.

I began to say, am I crazy, or has there been other people who thought this way? And I found that there's been a lot of people who thought this way, that a lot of things that we're going through today has been things that people have gone through over and over again, and that we have an immense amount of wisdom that we can gain from them, a lot of powerful things we can learn.

And so, for that reason, history became very dear to me, and I want to give you some of that passion that I have learned and I have gained from that into some of these people that we call Anabaptists.

So, before I go on to our first section here, could you just tell me a little bit about yourself? I know we did the introduction, but I wanna know, I don't think it's a bad thing. You talk to Mennonites, it's kinda like the ones that I visited up there in Germany.

Everyone's kind of embarrassed, well, I go to a Mennonite church, you know, everyone's embarrassed about your heritage. I love it, I want the colors. I want the colors of your heritage. So, anything you know about your heritage, whether it's Amish, Hutterite, Beechy, Russian, anything, I wanna know some of that so we can, well, sorry about that.

How many of you have been through a church split? Curious. Yeah, well, that's good. I mean, good, that's not all you had, but it's not good, the ones that you've been. We're gonna see that in our Mennonite history, in our Anabaptist history, I think it's a problem.

And we're gonna talk about that. And one of the things I would like to do during this time, I wanna be real with this history. These guys weren't saints in the sake of, well, they were saints, but they weren't perfect, you know?

And I want them, I wanted to go deep in preparation for this class to be able to tell this history like stories, instead of just the who split with who and fought over what doctrine. I wanna know, well, why were those doctrines important?

You know, what were you fighting over? Because usually, as I've found in my experiences, is that it's usually not the surface issues. You know, there's something a lot deeper. One of the expressions I've heard is that when you wanna beat a dog, it's easy to find a stick.

And so these issues become the stick to beat the dog. And there's been a lot of dogs through history, and probably even more sticks. But, so as we look to these people, I want to bring the crisis alive to you.

If we talk about the Amish and the Mennonite division, when we get to there, I wanna bring it to you, and I wanna ask you, so where would you have been? When we talk about Holland in the 1700s, which I think is very much like America in 2012, I want it to be able to be real to you so that we can learn to use history like a practice that we can, I'm in the medical world, and so when we look at things, you know, you practice medicine, you have things that happen that are pretty predictable.

And I think that we're gonna see, after going through this five-week course, that these things are painfully predictable. And for us, just be able to say, hey, do you like where this is going, or do you not like where this is going?

Because usually what I've seen happen over and over again, I think you're gonna see it, when it splits happen, a lot of time, truth is lost on both sides, and that's a shame. And so I want us to be real with these things.

I wanna bring out their warts, I wanna bring out, you know, if Minnow has some funny Christology, or if Conrad Grebel has some interesting past, I'm gonna bring that stuff out as much as I can in story form so these people can be real for us.

And the biggest thing, the biggest reason for that is, so you can say, you know, I'm not that different. And if he can do it with a rugrat like Conrad Grebel, he can do it with me. If he can do it for these people through time, he can do it for our church, he can do it today.

And so, that's what I'm hoping to do. So, with that in mind, I'm gonna read a very sobering introduction to the Martyrs' Mirror. That's what I passed out there. If you have your Martyrs' Mirror, I think it's page eight here.

And then I'm gonna read this. And the question that I want us to ask is, you know, what do you think? Is he right? Is he over the top? Are we weak? Well, you know, or what? You know, just, and I have till 1055.

All right. I'm gonna skip through some of this, so I try not to make it get too long. But each day, I'm gonna try to just, kind of like in a storybook fashion, I'm gonna open up the Martyrs' Mirror and I'm gonna read a story.

When we get to the How to Write, so I'm gonna read from the Chronicles. And so, I like to make these history stories come alive. I love telling stories. In my preaching, I tell stories. And so, if for anything else, I hope to give you a bunch of preaching stories that you can use, or stories you can use in life.

The Danger of Outward Success

It's telling the story that a lot of time makes a big point, a big difference, too. All right, in page eight of the Martyrs' Mirror, in the preface, this is the time written where persecution in Holland had ended.

And the Mennonites had quickly become extremely successful. Successful in church growth, successful in their businesses, successful in all the different things that they were doing, as far as at least the way the world would see from the outside.

But some of the concerned brethren thought, you know, I don't know if we have the success that you're talking about. As a matter of fact, what I'm seeing is that we have lost something. And as I read these words, I'll be honest with you, I think, wow, he's so intense.

I wonder if I'm, how much, how far gone I already am that this seems so over the top to me. You know what I mean? So here I go, I'm gonna read it. I'm gonna jump around a little bit. I notice, if you see in your text there where it's kind of italicized, that's the footnote section, just jump over that.

That's the way it printed out when I did that. But on page eight, here it is. Of greater, under the title, of the greater danger there is at this time than in the bloody and distressing times of the martyrs.

These are sad times in which we live. Nay, truly, there is more danger now than the time of our fathers who suffered death for the testimony of the Lord. Few will believe this because the great majority look to that which is external and corporal.

And in this respect, it is now better, quieter, and more comfortable. Few only look to that which is internal and pertains to the soul on which everything depends. And he quotes, for what is a man profit if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?

Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? These times are certainly more dangerous. For then, in those times of the martyrs, Satan came openly through his servants, even at noonday, as a roaring lion, so that they could be known.

And it now and then was possible to hide from him, you know, because he's obvious. Besides, his chief design then was to destroy the body. But now he comes as in the night or in the twilight, in a strange but yet pleasing form, and in a twofold way, lies in wait to destroy the soul, partly to trample underfoot and annihilate entirely, if this were possible, the only saving Christian faith, partly to destroy the true separated Christian life, which is the outgrowth of faith.

I'm gonna jump down a paragraph there. It grieves us to the heart that we must live to see these times, and therefore speak in this wise. Oh Lord, strengthen our faith. Thy weak trusting lambs, that they may not be led into error, nor moved from the foundations of the most holy faith.

On the other hand, through his instigation, the world now reveals itself very beautiful and glorious, more than at any preceding time. In a threefold pleasing form, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, almost all men run after her, to worship her as Queen Supreme, but all are deceived thereby.

Yea, many who have drunk of the poisoned wine of her lust, from the golden cup of her iniquities and deceptions, die a spiritual death. Jumping two paragraphs. These things which we tell you are no riddles, are blind speeches.

For we speak the truth, or the word of God must be false, but the word of God cannot lie. What we have said is certain and infallible, since God in his word bears witness of it. Yea, declares it emphatically and abundantly.

Skipping now down a paragraph. It certainly was through worldly lusts that the old world perished, that Sodom, Gomorrah, Zebium, and Admah was consumed, overthrown, and totally destroyed by the fire from heaven, that in 40 years, through serpents, fire, and other plagues, the wanton and lustful people of Israel perished to the number of over 600 ,000 in the wilderness, and that the mighty maritime cities, Ziddan and Tyrus, whose ships were trimmed and embroidered, silken sails from Egypt, whose rowers set on benches of ivory, where incalculable riches were bought and sold, and from carnal incentives, almost inconceivable arts practiced, were reduced to a heap of stones, and so leveled to the ground that the fishermen stretched out their nets to dry on the rocks upon which these cities once stood.

Skipping two paragraphs. Hence arises that shameful and vast commerce, which extends far beyond the sea and other parts of the world, Ezekiel 27, but which notwithstanding cannot satisfy those who love it, but on the contrary brings greater danger.

I'm reading this so we can understand the piety, we can understand what made these early Anabaptists ticked, but notwithstanding cannot satisfies those who love it. Love the world. But on the contrary brings great danger that that which has already been gotten may be lost, others defrauded, and they themselves, both in soul and body, stripped and robbed of their possessions.

Skipping a paragraph. The wearing of clothes from foreign countries, whether of foreign materials, uncommon colors, or of strange fashions as obtained in the course of time, according to the custom of the openly worldly-minded, which are as changeable as the moon, and which custom is followed by many humble and seemingly plain people, confirms greatly what we have said before.