(The Recovery of the Apostolic) 2. Gelassenheit - the Way of the Cross — Dale Heisey

The Apostolic View of the Cross and Persecution

It is our purpose here this afternoon to explain to you, as best we can, the Anabaptist and the apostolic view of the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. And that stood, their thinking there and their understanding there, stood in sharp contrast to that of those around them.

It made them a distinctive people, it caused the fires to light the stakes all across Europe, it so caused that many sons were never raised where their fathers lived for generations following each other, because persecution drove them onward.

Before we enter into this lesson, I'd like to call attention to the cover of your program that you may have received. There is a verse there that I feel so very well explains what we are trying to do in these two classes that we have together, and I want you to know that the brethren who have assumed responsibility for this work are not impressed with crowds, but with auditoriums packed with people.

We're certainly glad for those that come, but we happen to know that when Christ's Word is brought into the heart of a man, it brings with it a sword that pierces deep and divides asunder. And so we're not impressed with crowds.

Any one of us here this afternoon would spend equal time with anyone on an individual basis, one or two at a time, as well as with a group. I appreciate so very well the introduction concerning Philip's ministry.

It's to the soul that we're concerned. It's to the soul that we look to help, and not to the crowd. And I'm aware with you that no one has ever let anybody save one of his friends to Christ, and so it should be our responsibility to meet men on a one-to-one basis.

And that is my purpose here this afternoon, to help you be better equipped to do that one-to-one work, for there is where the kingdom is built. And they continue steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread and in prayers.

Recovering Apostolic Doctrine, Fellowship, Communion, and Prayer

We desire to see what's in our hearts, a recovery of apostolic truth, a recovery of apostolic vision. And this four-part outline, given in chapter 2, verse 42 of Acts, explains, as I can best understand it, what true apostolicity was.

It was that place, any place, where saints were gathered together under the sound of apostolic truth. They that know God hear us, we said last week. Those that know the Lord, they hear apostolic doctrine.

And so where truth comes forth from God's Word, that is requisite number one. But there is something else. These people that enjoy such a harmony of doctrine and such scriptural truth are bound together in fellowship, and they commit themselves one to another.

They are no longer their own, but they are part of each other. They are part of a brotherhood, a living body that seeks not its own, but its brother's welfare. It looks not upon its own things, but every man also upon the things of others.

And so there is fellowship. And now we have not only a vertical relationship between us and God, but there is a horizontal union between brethren on this earth. And so no man, we believe, comes to God by himself.

No man, the Anabaptist thought, comes to the Lord apart from his brother. And so we are one together, one in heart, one in mind, one in soul. This is followed then. This fellowship, this oneness, this unity is actualized in the periodic and very regular breakings of bread, one with another, from house to house, from service to service.

The bread of the Lord's body is broken, and souls express their unity, express their oneness, express their fellowship, express their love, one for another in this manner. And then there is that culminating power that the saints have on earth, as this one heart and one mind of God's children bows on their knees together in prayer.

I am of a firm persuasion this afternoon that although my prayers in my private closet have an effect upon God, the answers to the needs of the world are found when saints bind themselves together in prayer.

And for it is when we pray our Father, which art in heaven, that we have that perfect pattern that Christ gave us to fulfill. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.

And if ye, plural, shall ask anything in my name, it shall be done unto you, plural. It's plural in German, and in Spanish, and in the King James Version of the Bible. It's one of the things that we lose when we move from the older English that's in our KJVs here to the English that we have nowadays.

We have no distinct pronouns that show the difference between a plural you and a singular you. Spanish has a difference. It's stated for plural and it's said for singular. Or vosotros and tú. And in this Bible of ours, it makes it very clear that these prayers, these united prayers, with the plurality of God's children together of one heart and mind, have tremendous strength with God.

And so, I'm of the firm persuasion that true apostolicity, the apostolic doctrine, finds culmination in prayer when saints are gathered together. And with one heart they lift their voice to God. You will discover, as you study God's Word in the New Testament, that the outpourings of the Holy Spirit upon God's people always occurred where there was a group of saints together, where there was unity of heart and mind, where there was first a oneness of soul and spirit.

There, God comes upon His people where souls are one. And isn't that the very place we must bring ourselves to? And is that why we are as anemic, possibly, as many times we are? We're unable to get our Lord's congregation into one heart and one mind condition so that God's Spirit can be effectively moving upon us.

And so, we hold before you this afternoon this somewhat simple outline of what we are looking for and what we appreciate and what we desire to experience in our own hearts and what God's Word will teach us to enjoy and to anticipate.

And so, just to review and renew what we are about here, we are not interested, for those of you who were not here before, to build upon another man's foundation. We're not interested in returning to some former or some illustrative period of time when the Church seemed, for a while, to have regained some vision and strength.

But there's only one way to build a solid Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, and that is to return to the foundation laid in apostolic times, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone of that. Manus Simons himself said, the other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

And so, to that we desire to return. And so, although we use, at times, some references from Anabaptism as a model of what we feel God's Word will teach us, yet that model must be put into sheer leather in 1982.

And we cannot simply return to a medieval concept of Church life. I'd like to write a few words to the board to make a connection between our lesson last week and this one this week. Would you follow along as we write these words?

Corpus Christianum and the Definition of a Christian

We said last week that the basic issue facing the Anabaptists in the time of their sojourn in this world and their confrontation with the Reformers was what is the definition of a Christian? Who is a Christian?

These terms, of course, are Latin, as you see on the board there, but you can easily understand what they mean. Corpus is body. It's where we get our word corpus. Corpus Christianum means Christian body.

Corpus Christianum was a view held by the Reformers, Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, which the union, which the state, which the geographic or political area, which the socio-political area, if I've used that term, those two words mean the society and the political boundary of this particular area was all part of the Church that I am governing and I'm controlling.

And since we have a Catholic government, we have a Catholic Church. Since we have a Lutheran government, we have a Lutheran Church. Since we have a Reformed government and a Reformed political system, we have a Reformed Church.

And since the rulers are Christian, the state is Christian, then all the people that live here are Christian. And, of course, this brings to light, then, the reason why everyone born into this geographic area, born into these towns, born into these cantons must be baptized immediately upon birth, so they are also part of this Christian body.

It's a Christian union. Of course, this concept began politically with Theodosius. It began theologically with Augustine. But the Anabaptists, of course, rejected that. For how can a person, merely having been born into a political area, born into a certain geographic confinement, how can that person be a child of God?

In whose life has faith taken hold? And where is the word bringing forth the fruits of righteousness? Who has experienced metanoia? Who has experienced repentance? Who has moved his heart and mind from a one-world view to another kingdom view?

When has that transition taken place? And so they recognized that the Lord Jesus taught a Corpus Christi, the body of Christ, composed of those in whom His Spirit has called together into one body. And so, the Corpus Christi and the Corpus Christianum immediately found themselves at odds.

And we have the beginning of what we're talking about today, a two-world view of Anabaptism. The brothers said the word might be difficult to pronounce. I agree with him. And I am not German either, but it is a German term.

As I understand it, Golosanheit would be possibly a pronunciation of the term. What is Golosanheit? It is a term that they ascribe to their Christian life when they realize that he who is a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ must follow Him totally in this life.

I will say it another way. Golosanheit is an untranslatable term into our English language. Now, those of you who know a foreign language know that that is often the case. Terms in one language cannot be translatable into others.

I just met some Spanish folks here before the service began. They were unable to give a literal translation from one language to the next. And, by the way, for those of you who have an interest in Bible translations or in versions of the Bible, whoever would try to translate from Greek into English, for instance, has that problem continuously.

And that is why translators do not always agree on the exact rendering of a passage. Because there is no... For instance, there are no words in English or such terms in Greek as baptizo, for instance.

Now, we have no word in English such as Golosanheit. And so I can say discipleship comes close to it, but really doesn't. And we could possibly think of some other terms. Commitment or consecration, possibly.

But Golosanheit, as we would understand it, would speak of an attitude of heart. It is such an attitude where I totally realize, in totality I realize, that all of myself I must abandon to a cause that is greater than myself.

I yield myself. But the Anabaptists called it simplicity of heart. My heart is so simple. I give up easily. I just turn my life over to Christ. And when it comes to my way and His way, it's always His way.

When it comes to my way and the way of the cross, the way of the Word, I bow down. My heart is broken. I abandon myself. I have no right. I have no self-defense. I have no cause to promote. Say that of the glory of the cross, of which we've already sung this afternoon.

That is Golosanheit. Eternal yieldedness. Nothing to stand up for. Nothing to draw attention to here. Only Christ. Golosanheit. And of course, you must realize that this view was a dangerous view in a period of time, brethren.

When to live an irreproachable life was to be.

Suspicioned as an Anabaptist. And that meant.

Possible torture. And you know the end of the story from there. And yet one of you, this Golosanheit is not the kind of thing that stays in my heart. If there are any pious here today, I'm satisfied to take issue with you.

I'm satisfied to challenge you. If you feel that this way of life is a hard experience only, and I have it in here, dear brother, sister, Golosanheit means that not only have I yielded myself in my heart, but my life will be an expression of that which I believe.

And here is the difference between Anabaptism and the Reformation theology, where there was a split. There was a rift between faith and life. The Anabaptists knew no such split between faith and life.

They called such people and I can't give it in German. I wish I could. They said these people have a split heart. Their heart was cut in half. The one half of them had a sound theology and had a sound faith and had a sound position.

The other half of the heart was just like the world. There is no split heart in Anabaptism. There is no split heart in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. There was no split heart in Philip. There was no split heart in Paul.

There was a split heart in Peter. Yes, there was. But after he was converted, he strengthened his brother. I guess you know who was up at Wittenberg. Martin Luther and Thomas Munster and Carl Stapp and some of those of his cohorts up there.

Remember those times talking about faith. For they were not theologians. The word term to use, because Jesus used it too. Would you turn to Matthew chapter 16 verse 24. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.

For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels.

Then he shall reward every man according to his works. Verily I say unto you, there be some standing here which shall not taste of death till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom. Jesus said, when it's all said and done, you can have any kind of theology you want to have, and you can do anything to make yourself believe that you're part of the church of Jesus Christ or part of some fellowship or communion somewhere, but unless you have your cross and are following me, you are not a disciple of mine.

Is it a term that comes to us from German? Expressing this experience is the term nachfolge Christi, following Christ or being followers of Christ. Nachfolge became for them the earmark of who were truly disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Nachfolge. Now, may I express it in this manner. We had said last week, do you recall this, that the Catholics, Reformers and Anabaptists had three different ways of deciding or defining what a Christian was.

The Catholics, if I could just refresh your memory, took this position that a Christian was he who received the grace of God through the sacrament. As oil was poured, the wafer put on the tongue, the spritzings of water, if I may use that term, including, may I say it in a public meeting, spit from the mouth of the priest upon the forehead of a child and then wiped across his forehead with his finger in the shape of a cross.

Imports grace to a child. That person is a Christian now because grace has moved through this priesthood, through the somehow miraculous body of this priest and has anointed this child with faith. The Reformers came along and recognized that a Christian was he who has experienced this understanding or concept of justification.

He realizes that Christ has died and he realizes he was sinner and absolutely unable to do a thing about it. As long as he holds his eye, somehow catches a glimpse of faith, he sees that Christ did this thing and now I'm saved because of faith.

In fact, Luther was so determined to convince men there was faith and all faith and nothing but faith that he actually put the word only behind the verse. By faith only. A word that is not found in the Bible, Greek or German or anything.

For those who felt that a Christian was he who had received the word of God in his heart, lived it out in his daily life. And you and I believe, I think you and I are convinced this afternoon that we definitely must have a synthesis and I appreciate the way our meeting ended last week.

A synthesis of those two thoughts. Truly we realize our sinful condition apart from God we can do nothing. And all good for all our righteousness is a filthy rag. But dear brothers and sisters, to have faith in a heart that does not give expression in daily life is not to take up a cross and follow him.

I can be a Schwenkenfelder. I don't need to face the cross. I can just love God in my heart, you know. I remember the evangelist Tom Skinner. He's a Negro man. He said he doesn't understand what people mean when they walk up to him and they're white and he's black and they say to him, I love you in my heart, brother.

I love you in my heart. If your love doesn't get out of your heart, if your love doesn't leave your heart, if my love doesn't leave my heart, I have no love to leave. That's why it stays there. Until the love gets out of my heart, I have no love.

Until my faith leaves my heart, there is no faith. Until my faith gets expressed in the way I'm walking and following Christ, I have no faith to express. For faith is living and not dead. Now, in a person then, can we draw together from these last two points that were on the board last week?

We want someone who's not only spiritually motivated, but also externally patterned after the New Testament. Can you think about that thought for a while? Or may we rise to a somewhat higher explanation and say it another way.

Someone who is spiritually driven and at the same time externally disciplined by the living Word of God. Word in my heart. And so I am driven by that Word. The Bible tells me when Jesus was, before he was tempted of the devil in the wilderness for 40 days.

I'm not sure the temptation lasted that long, but he was there for 40 days. The Bible says that he was driven of the Spirit and Spirit driven. In chapter 8 of Romans, where we are told that as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.

The word in Greek is the same. As many as are driven by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. And it's interesting for me to note and share with you this afternoon as also appears in this program near the bottom by the page there.

Master Ulrich, you have not the right to leave this decision, this question to the council. The matter is already decided. The Spirit of God decides it. I call your attention to that quotation because the Anabaptists made no distinction between that which the Word of God will teach a man and that which the Spirit of God will teach a man.

The two are one. Perfect harmony in the triune Godhead. And so, being spiritually allowing this life to be disciplined by that same Word, we have the synthesis that Anabaptism stood for and which we believe we want to stand for today.

Discipleship and Counting the Cost of the Cross

Following Christ, not Bogdi. Turn, would you, to Luke 14. I'd like to read verses 25 through 33 here. Turn and said unto them, If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and is in life also, he cannot be my disciple.

And whosoever does not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he hath sufficient to finish it?

Let haply, if he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish. For what king going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and consoleth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand?

Or else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sendeth an embassy, and desireth conditions of peace. So likewise, whosoever he be of you, that forsakeneth not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.

Do we believe that? How many times have you noticed the concept of cost? In that passage I read from chapter sixteen, and this passage from Luke fourteen, there is a cost involved with being a disciple.

And our responsibility, if we are going to return to any kind of apostolic position, is to recover, to redefine, and come to experience just what is that cost that comes along with carrying the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ today.

And we will offer to you some suggestions along that line as you bear with us in prayer throughout the afternoon. What is this cost? This is the issue for which we must search. Now, I would like to give a definition for discipleship that is not original to me.

I copied it from a book earlier today, and may you just contemplate this thought. Discipleship, a burning passion to seek and to serve the kingdom of God, to follow Christ into suffering, to allow the cross, to explain the difference between myself and the world in which I learned the concept that was brand new to me.

If I could somehow communicate it to you, then I'm satisfied the afternoon would not be in vain if only one of you people here today had, the apostles had, taken a pledge of life that was completely foreign to the people around them, and here it was.

How is it that somebody can walk up to an Anabaptist brother or sister and smite them on one side of the face, and they could turn the other side without calling for revenge? What's the difference? The difference for them was easily explained.

The cross was the difference. Here, curse me. For we do good to those who hate us, and pray for those who wish to use us and persecute us. How impressive it would have been if you kneel there in the forest floor and hear those brothers tormentors, even as they are cursed, to pounce it upon them as wolves upon sheep, persecuting them.

How impressive that would be. The difference is the cross, for they explained that all. You see, once a person has died on the cross, once we have been crucified with Christ and the life we now live, we live by the faith of the Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us.

We need no other explanation. Let's go further to explain the difference in which we live. I must share with you at this point, upon that cross that severed me from this world, by my brethren. The kind of letters written from prison to home congregations, such as Michael Sattler wrote back to Horb, before I understood this thought, he realized that instead of him taking time to explain all the brutality done to him, and all the torture he suffered, and by the way, if you read your martyrs' murder, you'll find it awfully difficult to find those brethren, in their letters, explaining what they endured.

Note that with keen interest. Instead of that, encouraging the brethren back home, and don't try to, don't be too worried about me, don't be too concerned about myself. I'm doing all right. We're just glad for your love and for your fellowship.

And realizing the fact there in the cell that was still remaining, there was strong support and sharing of the suffering that they were enduring right there in the cell. Did Jesus say the same thing on the way to the cross, in his discipleship of his brother?

Discipleship as Separation from the Social Order

By saying that, first of all, it's to the Anabaptists, it's found time and time again in Anabaptist literature. Here they took upon themselves in the natural or accepted social order. May I explain it?

Natural order would dictate that a man has a job. Natural order would dictate that a man has and takes care of and provides for his family. Natural order dictates that a man has an education. Natural order dictates that a man has some responsibility in his political system where he lives.

Possibly the magistrate. Nonetheless, he's at least helping to maintain the political union where he is. The banjo of Christ, to go into all the world and preach the gospel, meant that I must break with one of those institutions of the natural order, he would do so.

Conrad Grebel had three children when he died of the plague. Lived very little of his time with them. His wife Barbara never united with him in the faith. I cannot comprehend that. I can hardly comprehend that, I should say.

How that that man was able to face the challenges he faced without the support of his wife. My wife knows how difficult it is for me to bear up under pressure sometimes with her total support. How would it be with none?

Martin Luther taught just the opposite about discipleship. If you're a Lutheran here today, I don't want you to be upset or offended at this presentation. We feel responsible by the grace of God to take our eyes off of man and bring them back to the word of God here.

It just seems the Lord teaches us about discipleship. He saw the Bible taught discipleship too and must make application to it in modern times. In his own times. It surrounds the discipleship meaning a break from the social and normal order.

He said that a person is a disciple as he does an effective job at home in his family, in his occupation, in his magistrate. And so if he was a constable, he should now be a Christian constable and be a better constable than the man was before.

He'll be a better farmer now. He'll be a better artisan now. He'll be a better craftsman now because he's a Christian. Was conceived largely in terms of what makes for a stable social order rather than as in the case of Anabaptist, that which advances a new and different order called the kingdom of God.

As between staying at home and being a good Christian, father or mother, within a settled religious social system and going from village to village to preach the gospel of repentance, Luther's conservative and social responsible attitude emphasized the former.

Stay at home. Be effective at home. Take care of things at home. Build a home. Increase the size of the farm. Add to the business. The latter was interpreted to mean social revolution, whereas Luther's real interests lay in reinforcing traditional patterns of the broadest conceivable diffusion of Christian grace.

Take this Christian grace all you people have and just make a whole community Christian. To Luther, the divine calling was to station in which one finds himself. He considered no occupation wrong if it is integral to civil life.

This included even the magistrate and the military. I wonder what you're thinking. If you're with me this afternoon, you are aware that by and large the fellowships that we are acquainted with that stand for conservative doctrine are Lutheran this afternoon and not Anabaptist.

Working at home, that's that thing that you've been doing. Somehow be a good Christian at home. In this way, the gospel will be diffused. Maintain the social order. Maintain the traditional pattern. Somehow Christianize it.

I want you to know that is a Corpus Christianum view is exactly what that is. Somehow this thing will spread across the whole thing and the whole world will become convergent. You can call it post-brutalism if you want to.

It's the same thing. You can call it modernism if you want to. It's the same thing. Sooner or later with this kind of salt and sprinkling light going across the earth, the whole world will be converted after a while.

We'll have an utopia here. It is a false view, brothers and sisters. I want to go further and emphasize another point here. Like Martin Luther, oftentimes from the Pauline epistles in theology, rather than drawing from the very origins of the apostolic faith, the Sermon on the Mass, the Gospels, the very origins of life's love, here's what we have done.

Instead of taking Jesus' words, except the man hates father and mother and wife and brother and sister more than myself, he's not worthy of me. Instead of taking that passage straight from the words of our Christ and holding it before our people as a challenge and as an ethic and as the way of the cross, we go back to a corrective letter and we pick up this.

Except the man provides for his own, he has denied the faith and is worse than an infidel. You decide for yourself which of those two emphases you are hearing where you are. Do we hear the one? There's a sore divide between fathers and mothers, and this soreness is cut right down through family lines.

Are we hearing that teaching or are we hearing this? Fathers, let's be stable. Let's provide. I'm going to tell you something. We try to build our congregations and try to build our personal lives upon the patterns of those who continually needed corrective letters to maintain the pure apostolic vision.

Brothers and sisters, at the cost of your heart, we try to build upon a corrective church pattern, a church that needed one correction after the next if only they would have returned to pure apostolicity.

The corrections would not have been needed. We're saying that we should draw our life and our pattern from the work of those epistles rather than from the first streams of the word of God where it flows the purest.

I say return. I say return to the Sermon on the Mount. I say return to the words of Jesus Christ. I say return to an apostolic foundation and not build our hearts and our homes and our congregations upon congregations who were established and already deteriorating and degenerating to the tune of needing correction in one matter after the next after the next.

And so we need to regain this concept of the Great Commission as part of discipleship. It's a cost that we're not paying today. And you know what we're doing instead of it. If I could somehow pass out tracts on a Saturday night or wherever it is, if I could somehow fit into the singing at the old people's homes some evening and still maintain all I've got here, that's fine.

The Two Kingdoms and the Theology of the Cross

I'll do it. And I go about as far as what my Father will allow me to go. And there's where it stops. And brethren, that is not the apostolic position. Point number two on the discipleship. That globe represents the world in which you and I live.

That world is a battlefield. A battlefield between two kingdoms. There is the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ. And there is the kingdom and the powers of darkness and desire for rule. Claiming territory, birth-claiming oneness here, birth-claiming possession.

The child of God faces the injustice. This is why the child of God faces the sword. This is why he suffers wrong. This is why he is martyred. This is why he has no right to defend. Because he shares a view of this kingdom here rather than be part of that kingdom there.

He knows there's a time coming when that whole kingdom will be destroyed. It's not a matter of a kingdom within a kingdom. So is Luther. It's not a little pure church in the midst of the corpus Christianum.

Luther was hoping that somehow he could get a little cell together of true Christians. Somehow this big machine. Somehow this big program. No. It's not one within the other. There are two kingdoms in power.

You're either part of the one or part of the other. And so there dare be no connection between them. Brother Daniel last week called our attention to the Lutheran and Reformed position of the cross, which they call the theology of the cross.

And I gave a few thoughts about that then in the open discussion. And we'll just share a few more things about that and how it relates to this kingdom here. For a Reformer, the theology of the cross meant this.

Here's my heart. Here's my conscience. Here's the word of God. And the Jews don't quite agree. My conscience is guilty. My conscience is continually submitted. There's the pure words. There's apostolic truth.

And here's my life. And so I must bear somehow this guilt of conscience. And there's this struggle between what I am and what I know I ought to. I'm continually oppressed, which bears down upon my heart, my conscience, being guilty and defiled.

Sin answered them as a sinner. Sin always remains with them. But somehow it's the cross that I must bear. Whereas for the Anabaptists the concept was quite different. They saw a theology of martyrdom.

They expected because the cross stood between them and these two kingdoms, there was nothing but suffering to anticipate here. That didn't matter to them. That didn't matter. It was only the means of entrance into a greater and more important life.

May I share with you three views of the cross at this hour. The Anabaptists and the Reformers, their view of the cross was this. That creature of sin. That's why you need to second it. To somehow try to overcome this sin that's in his life.

And the cross stands here. And the cross is the only way to take care of sin. Where? The cross. Put it on the church building. Have it in front of me in the car. Dash forward. The cross. Wherever that cross is, as long as I have that cross, as long as I'm carrying that cross, somehow there's room for my sin problem.

You say, that sounds all right. It doesn't ever get to move. There's a patriotistic view. And this one scares me, because this one comes very close to home. It's the view of the cross that, oh, I get a tremendous uplift.

And they get together in their conventicals, and they just encourage each other with just what all this cross has done for me this week. Oh, it was so wonderful to be under this cross. It's a little more than emotionalism, because it doesn't affect the life I live.

The Anabaptists, it was something entirely different. It was a necessary part of the present life. A part from which there was no explanation for this stuff. A necessary part of the present life. The third point.