 The early Anabaptists stepped onto the scene of 16th century Europe with a bucket of water. And they had the invitation, come and receive baptism. Come repent of your sins. Join the true church of God. Follow Jesus. And when someone came up and had that water, that handful of water poured over their head, they accepted a life of suffering, a life of persecution. They knew that at any time they could be arrested for that act, imprisoned, tortured, and killed. And we often think of that, the person giving up his life, surrendering his life to Jesus by having that handful of water poured on his head. But even more dangerous was to be the water pourer. If you were the water pourer, you were in even more danger. You were wanted ten times more. Now they wouldn't put out placards looking for an ordinary member, say, big money reward if we catch ordinary church member. But if you were the water pourer, if you were the baptizer, they would put out placards with your name on it and say, reward for the capture of Meno-Symons. Reward for the capture of Jacob Hutter. Reward for the capture of those who poured the water. What was it that motivated the water pourers? Despite the huge danger, the huge risk, the huge personal cost. And there was a personal cost. Meno-Symons died peacefully in his bed. But there was a personal cost because he was on the run his entire life. He was in hiding his entire life. His family was harassed his entire life. What was it that motivated them to endure that personal cost and beyond just the water pourers? What was it that motivated the army of ordinary Anabaptists whose names have been lost to history who evangelized their neighbors in smaller ways? They risked their lives printing booklets and pamphlets in secret. They invited their neighbors to Anabaptist meetings. They talked about the gospel to their neighbors, their coworkers, their family members, their friends. Now the title of this talk that they gave me was How the Gospel Spread in 16th Century Europe. We're going to talk about how some, but ultimately, I think that the why is more important and more relevant for us because some of their methods from then, some of their how, are ultimately not all that helpful for us today. I think of methods like pulpit stealing when George Blau Rock would dramatically go up into the state church preacher's pulpit and try to preach while the state church preacher is trying to preach. I don't think we'd consider that all that helpful today. Another method they had that I don't think we would consider all that helpful today was sending out illiterate messengers. I don't think that would work very well today, but there were some Anabaptist evangelists who were literally illiterate and they had simply memorized the Lord's Prayer and the Apostles Creed and some Anabaptist interpretations of those texts and would go and share those with other professing Christians, Catholics or Lutherans or whoever, who would acknowledge the authority of the Lord's Prayer and the Apostles Creed, share the Anabaptist interpretation. That was all the messengers knew. Now that, I think we could say was noble for their time and worked just fine when there was very low literacy in Europe. But I don't think that we would consider that very wise or would condone it today. But their motivations can still inspire us and help us and they got results. As just one example between his ordination in 1551 and his death in 1582, Leonard Bowens baptized over 10,000 people. That's in 31 years he baptized over 10,000 people and he kept a record of his baptisms and that's why we know the total. Other Anabaptist evangelists had similar extraordinary success. For instance, Hans Hoot, who I was not able to find a total or even an estimate for, but I'm sure that he baptized thousands as well. And when we think about those kind of numbers and that kind of evangelistic success, I think that that can be almost discouraging, not almost, maybe altogether. We look today and think we have no hope that any one of us, no realistic hope that any one of us sitting here today will baptize 10,000 people in 30 years. We just don't see that kind of thing happening today. And so we get discouraged. Here are some other things that can be discouraging. Acts 241. Then they that gladly received his word were baptized and the same day there were added unto them about 3,000 souls. Acts 4, 4. How be it many of them which heard the word believed and the number of the men was about 5,000. Acts 5, 14. And believers were the more added to the Lord multitudes, both of men and women. Acts 9, 31. Then had the churches rest throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria and were edified and walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost were multiplied. Acts 9, 35. And all that dwelt at Lidda and Zeran saw him and turned to the Lord. We read these kind of things in the book of Acts and I think that sometimes we can almost turn green with envy except we know we're not supposed to envy. And we wonder what is wrong with us? Is it us that's the problem? You sometimes hear sermons that say that God didn't put the book of Acts in the Bible to tease us or to taunt us. And so the problem must be us. We're not filled with the Holy Ghost enough. And so we're not having this kind of success that we see in the book of Acts. We're not having this kind of success we see in the early Anabaptist movement. The problem must be us. We're not spiritual enough. Well, I think that we need to take a little different perspective on that because if you keep reading in Acts you find another experience that the Apostles also had as soon as they set foot outside of Judea and Galilee and Samaria, the places where Jesus had ministered. Acts 1734. This is after Paul's sermon on Mars Hill, a powerful sermon and one that we would all say he was filled with the Holy Ghost. This was the result. How be it certain men clave unto him and believed among the which was Dionysus the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them. I don't know how many others is, but it certainly doesn't sound like very many. Luke gives two names of believers, people who believed after Paul's Mars Hill sermon. Two names and then he says and others. I don't know how many that was, but it sure doesn't sound like very many. Acts chapter 18, as you read through the chapter of Acts 18, you see a range of experiences. After these things, Paul departed from Athens and came to Corinth and then it goes on to describe how he worked with Aquila and Priscilla and it says in verse 4, he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath and persuaded the Jews and the Greeks. So he was making converts, but Luke doesn't make any big pronouncement about how many it was. Acts and then in verse 5, and when Silas and Timothyus were come from Macedonia, Paul was pressed in the spirit and testified to the Jews that Jesus was Christ. And when they opposed themselves and blasphemed, he shook his raiment and said unto them, your blood be upon your own heads. I am clean. From henceforth I will go unto the Gentiles. So he had times where he had apparently no success. Then the next verse, and he departed thence and entered into a certain man's house named Justice, one that worshiped God, whose house joined hard to the synagogue. And Christmas the chief ruler of the synagogue believed on the Lord with all his house and many of the Corinthians hearing believed and were baptized. So Paul says, Luke says, many believed then. But we have a range of experiences throughout that chapter. Outright hostility, failure of making any progress, and then many believing. In Acts 19 we see something similar. Paul comes to Ephesus and finds the one dozen disciples who had been baptized with John's baptism and he rebaptizes them. And then in verse 8 it says, He went into the synagogue and spake boldly for the space of three months, disputing and persuading the things concerning the kingdom of God. But when diverse were hardened and believed not, but spake evil of that way before the multitude, he departed from them and separated the disciples, disputing daily in the school of one Tyranus. So we have an experience where he's preaching for three months and seems to make very little headway. In fact, the people just become hardened and opposed to the gospel and he ends up leaving the situation, taking the believers somewhere else. He separated the disciples, it says. So with this fuller picture of the Book of Acts, what are we really to think of the spectacular success at the beginning of the Book of Acts? Did the apostles somehow lack the Holy Spirit or spiritual power after leaving Jerusalem? I think we would all agree that that is absurd to think that. The mass conversions in the early part of the Book of Acts happened under a specific set of circumstances that can never be replicated again. All those mass conversions happened in or around Jerusalem or one of them is described in Samaria, I believe. All of these are areas where Jesus had personally ministered while he was on earth. And if you think of that, that gives you the key to what this was all about. The ministry of Jesus had touched hundreds, maybe thousands of lives. You think of all the healings in the Book of Acts, all the times it says that he preached, all the times he talked to people. He must have touched hundreds or thousands of lives when he went back to heaven and afterwards, while the apostles were waiting in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit, there was only 120 people in that upper room. Out of all the thousands and thousands of people, Jesus had healed and preached to and ministered to in his lifetime. Only 120 were there in that upper room. But as soon as the Holy Ghost came and the apostles said that the day of grace was available and it was time to repent and be baptized, thousands responded because they were ready to respond. Jesus had himself touched all these lives and when they heard that Jesus had risen from the dead, they were ready instantly to believe and follow him because they knew what his life had been like. In addition to just the people Jesus had touched during his lifetime, Jesus had sent out emissaries, first the 12 and then the 70. And those touched thousands more lives. And so you have this huge pool of people right around Judea and Galilee and Samaria of people who were ready to instantly respond when the apostles began proclaiming the gospel and inviting people to baptism after the Holy Spirit came. But as soon as they left that area, then that situation didn't exist anymore. Jesus had not gone into the Gentile areas. The 70 and the 12 had not gone into the Gentile areas and so you're going into areas where people may possibly have heard rumors or stories about Jesus but mainly probably not. And you have Jews who are expecting the Messiah so you have a pool there and you have God-fearers who are the Gentile people who maybe believe in one God but aren't ready to be circumcised and become Jews. They're a pool of potential converts and then you have pagans and the apostles preached and they had results but it was not anything as spectacular as in the early book of Acts. And the same thing applies to the spread of early Anabaptism. Why is it that out of about a dozen people who were baptized on January 21st, 1525, you have at the end of the century 75 years later, thousands of Anabaptists 2,000 had given their lives for their faith by that point and you have thousands spread across Europe. Well they lived at a time where there were specific historical circumstances that made that kind of spectacular spread possible. There was a general eagerness for church reform in Europe at that time. You had lots of people who were very dissatisfied with the corrupt Catholic church and the corrupt clergy and the many abuses in that system. And they were ready and eager for church reform and ready to embrace it when they found it. You also had the Peasants' War that happened in 1525 just as Anabaptism was starting the Peasants' War happened and ended. And the Peasants' War was all about the peasants being upset at the lords for the economic abuses that they were suffering under and also their anger at the reformers like Martin Luther for having preached church reform and finally not doing much about it, not making any efforts to actually stop the abuses that were happening in the church. And so finally the peasants got fed up and they rose up and then the authorities slaughtered them by the thousands and it was a terrible situation but after they were crushed the peasants still wanted something better and the Anabaptist missionaries had it and you had thousands of people ready to accept it. You also had an environment of apocalypticism which means obsession with the idea that this is the end times. Now we look back at it and think it all looks rather funny and absurd five hundred years later but to them it was real and it was no question. Everybody was convinced these were the end times. It didn't matter if you were an Anabaptist or Lutheran or Catholic or anything. Everybody knew without a shadow of a doubt this is the end of time. And if you think about what's happening in the early 1500s you have to agree that from their perspective it made a huge amount of sense. Everything Jesus had said would happen was happening. The man of sin, the Antichrist was unveiled. It was the Pope. Everybody knew that. For the Anabaptists from their perspective the false prophet had been revealed. It was Martin Luther and the Reformers. It was obvious. So there was no question in their mind that this is the end of days and the apocalyptic end of the world which could involve maybe the Turks coming and slaughtering all of Christian Europe or something like that was here. And so you had an environment very conducive to the spread of Anabaptism. And then in the low countries in Holland and so forth you have the Sacramentarian movement which had begun in the 1400s and this was a movement within the Catholic Church of people who disagreed with the Catholic explanation of the sacrament of the Mass of Communion of the Lord's Supper and they disagreed with the Catholic explanation of that and they suffered persecution but there was a huge Sacramentarian movement in the low countries before Anabaptism started. And so when the Anabaptist missionaries came they had a very natural audience with the Sacramentarians because they already believed the Catholic Church was wrong about Communion. They were very ready to embrace the idea that the Catholic Church was an Anabaptism too. So those are some factors that fed into the growth the rapid growth of early Anabaptism. Now comparing that with today I want you to think about something else and this is a concept that Gary Miller talks about some in his book Reaching America which is a very good book. Think of the distance someone has to travel to become a Kingdom Christian to become an Anabaptist or to become a Christian and the first example in Second Temple Judaism. How far did someone have to go? If you're here you're a faithful Jewish person in the Second Temple era you already believe the Messiah is coming and you already believe that there's one God and you already believe that God has the right to tell you what to do and you have to obey it. In Jesus he didn't look like the Messiah they were expecting but he was obviously the Messiah so there wasn't that huge of a gap. They could make that jump and of course spiritually they have to repent to their sins they have to give up everything surrender everything to Jesus that is unchanged through all centuries but mentally how far did they have to get their mind to embrace that? We'll say is this far. In the 16th century how far did he have to go to become an Anabaptist? Well again they already believed in one God they already believed in the Trinity they believed in the Divinity of Jesus they believed that the Bible is true all these sort of things they already believed and so the Anabaptist message only had to get them this far they only had to change their views on baptism they had to change their views on the church on some very significant lifestyle things like non-resistance so we'll say again it's this far now today think of your average American how far does a person have to come to become a Kingdom Christian? Well the fastest growing religious group today in America are called the Nuns now that's not nuns like Catholic nuns that's N-O-N-E-S people who put nun by the question what is your religious affiliation now they may believe in some sort of God but they certainly don't believe that he has any kind of claim to make them be a certain religion maybe they don't believe in God at all maybe they're agnostics but they certainly live like there's no God so you take a nun today how far does he have to get to become a Kingdom Christian? first he has to accept the fact that there's a God and then he has to accept the fact that the God of Christianity is that God and then he has to accept the fact that the Bible is true and authoritative and that Jesus is the Messiah and he has to come to embrace non-resistance embrace all the teachings of Jesus before he can finally get to that point and there's a huge distance and so I think that it's very important that we not beat ourselves over lack of evangelistic success compared to the Apostles in the first few years of the church and compared to the early Anabaptists we need to take this into account and say this is the place God has put us God put them in that place and they did well in their age and that is absolutely wonderful that they had the success they did but we can't expect to do what they did because we live in a different age and we can be faithful and if we can be faithful and we can proclaim God's word and if we can snatch a few out of the fire then we have to be happy we have to praise God for that success and work hard we do not take this as saying that we need to have an excuse for dampened zeal we need to increase our zeal but we need to have it tempered so back now to the early Anabaptists again not only was it ordained men or specifically commissioned missionaries who evangelized it was every member and this was a key to their success and I think has to be a key to our evangelistic success if we are going to have any every member was expected to be active in proclaiming and spreading the gospel they spread the gospel to their coworkers to their employees to business contacts to family members and to neighbors I read an interesting article in the April 1962 issue of Mennonite Quarterly Review called the Missionary Vision and Activity of the Anabaptist Laity and it includes several accounts of this kind of this kind of thing ordinary people in the ordinary round of life spreading the gospel to their associates to people they met one Anabaptist who was arrested in 1535 was asked by the judge if he had sought to win followers to the Anabaptist movement and he said that he and his comrades had compelled no one to join the movement but quote wherever they traveled or lived they spoke the word of the Lord in 1539 one German citizen of a German city said from the Anabaptists is from the devil for they gladly would have persuaded all of us one man was brought to the Anabaptist movement because his tailor was an Anabaptist he went to his tailor and asked the tailor to make him a coat and he said later that it was a coat tailored handsomely and in a proud style and the tailor asked him what are you saying about pride and with that as the entrance this man was one to the gospel one to Anabaptism because his tailor challenged him about how he wanted his coat made and then here's a quote from that article even toward the end of the century and later the Wurttemberg government considered the propaganda activity of Anabaptist women who spread their faith through word of mouth or through booklets so dangerous that married women who could not be expelled from the account of their little children were chained at home so that they could not lead other people astray they literally thought the Anabaptist women were such a threat that they were willing to get chained and chain her to her kitchen table so that she could not get out and spread the message this of course the author goes on to say did not eliminate the possibility that visitors who came into the house might be infected often the woman who had been chained was lost or was freed by her husband from her unhappy state and I was challenged as I studied for this message about my own zeal for evangelism the devil never had to go find a chain and chain me at home to keep me from spreading the gospel I need to take increased zeal and increased inspiration from these heroines of the faith who the devil was so scared of he had to get a chain to keep them at home so that the Anabaptists were the most organized of all Anabaptists in missions they had the religious freedom in Moravia that they were able to make a bigger structure and more organized and they were able to have everything just more organized to send out evangelists regularly now Anabaptists under persecution like the Swiss Brethren are now as organized that they couldn't do that on that kind of level as well as the Hutterites were but interestingly the Hutterites were also the weakest of Anabaptists on personal evangelism of lay members to their neighbors and casual contacts because they lived on these Bruderhoffs and there was more limited contact and also there were German speakers and they lived in an area where there was a language barrier but that did not keep the lay members from writing letters to their family back home begging them to repent to come to God and to come to Moravia and join the church in Moravia even in the devastation of the 30 years war the Hutterites still sent out messengers across Europe in this horrendously terribly bloody time when it wasn't safe to travel the Hutterites still sent out missionaries and the Hutterite Chronicle says this in an entry for 1620 this year too we followed the example of our forefathers by sending out several brothers to various places in Germany they went to seek those on fire for the truth and to call people to repentance it amazed many people in Bohemia where both hostile armies were encamped as well as in Germany that our defenseless members set out in a time of such terrible danger when scarcely anyone whether of high or low estate could travel in safety but the Lord was their protector and they relied on him alone when their task was completed through the intercession of his people he led them home again in peace and safety so what were some of the motivations that motivated Anabaptists to tirelessly evangelize even when it was so risky I don't claim that I'm going to give a comprehensive list here and hopefully if I leave something unsaid that should be said the Holy Spirit will bring it to your mind but part of their motivation was that they saw the goal of restoring the church to its apostolic purity and building this glorious church as such a worthy and such a noble and such a wonderful goal that filled them with excitement to go out and evangelize Anabaptism could be defined this way Anabaptism is a pure church separated from the world made up of spiritually regenerated disciples of Jesus Christ who live in brotherhood community practicing non-resistance and non-conformity to the world out of a two kingdom concept and every point of that sentence filled the Anabaptists with such passion such enthusiasm that they were willing to risk their lives to accomplish it with God's help they did not see benefit in weakening the message to gain more converts there was not any gatherings where they got together and said you know we could just make more converts if we just made it a little easy we could just change this here and make it a little easier and we'll get more converts the historian Colin Godwin in the book Baptizing, Gathering, and Sending writes this missioners saw no reason to explain away their particular emphases in the Bible such as believers baptism and congregational discipline because their application might be difficult they were not prepared to adjust the ethical requirements of their congregations to make allowances for sinners who might ultimately come to a fuller understanding of the truth upon further teaching they were ready to reject all of the interpretations of the state churches in order to put into practice the word and example of Christ to do otherwise would be to consider the Bible a fable or fairy tale invented by human beings for their own benefit the Hutterite leader Peter Walpot who is an 8 year old boy had watched George Blowerock burned to death wrote this God desires a new heart and a voluntary church which if its own free will separates itself from all evil and all taint of sin both within and without and not only that every faithful, zealous believer and friend of God is responsible in the love of God to testify against all evil and unrighteousness against all works of darkness and against the ungodly life of the world he must witness against the unbelievers point out their transgressions to them and use the sword of the spirit lest he be a hypocrite in the eyes of God and man in order to preach any message in order to preach to others with conviction a person must be totally convinced himself not just convinced that the gospel is true I am sure that everyone sitting here today believes that the gospel is true but convinced that the gospel is good news and that every person would be benefited every person on this earth would be benefited would be better for hearing this good news and accepting it sometimes to hear people talk I wonder whether they really think the gospel is good news or not in order to preach to others with authenticity a person must be living the message himself in order to make the message attractive to others he must embody the joy of Christian living and show that this way of life above all others is a good way to live both for time and for all eternity and the early Anabaptists knew that the gospel was good news they had been delivered from their sins they had been set free they experienced the peace and joy of forgiveness the love of brotherly love and community they knew that the gospel was good news a 16th century Hutterite baptismal sermon put it this way this assurance and seal of the promise of God is offered to mankind at Christ Jesus through the gospel which is a joyful message of our salvation which announces peace to us and the immeasurable riches of Christ which gospel is a power of God that saves all those who believe it what more joyful message is there for a bound man than release and freedom no more pleasant message could be brought so also is the preaching of Christ the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God which God had promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures and bestowed on us the Anabaptists were also filled with care for the souls of others Mano Simons made wrote this about when he was first asked to become a minister when I heard this that is the request that he be a minister my heart was greatly troubled trouble and fear were on every side on the one hand I was sensible of my limited talents, my unlearnedness my weak nature, the timidity of my spirit the exceedingly great wickedness perversity and tyranny of the world the great and powerful sects the subtlety of many minds and the woefully heavy cross that would weigh on me not a little should I comply on the other hand the great hunger and need of these God fearing pious children for I saw plainly that they erred as do a harmless sheep which have no shepherd when the persons before mentioned did not desist from their supplications and my own conscience made me somewhat uneasy even in my weakness because I saw the great hunger and need referred to then I surrendered myself soul and body to the Lord and committed myself to his grace and commenced in due time to the word to teach and to baptize to till the vineyard of the Lord with my little talent to build up his holy city and temple and to repair the tumbledown walls and many years later after that event Man of Simons was able to say this therefore we preach as much as possible both by day and by night in houses and in fields in forests and waste, hither and yon at home and abroad at dungeons, in water and in fire on the scaffold and on the wheel before lords and princes through mouth and pen with possessions and blood with life and death we have done this these many years and we are not ashamed of the gospel of the glory of Christ, Romans 116 for we feel his living fruit and moving power in our hearts as may be seen in many places by the lovably patience and willing sacrifices of our faithful brethren and companions in Christ Jesus we could wish that we might save all mankind from the jaws of hell, free them from the chains of their sins and by the gracious help of God add them to Christ by the gospel of his peace for this is the true nature of the love which is of God they were motivated by knowing that the gospel was a good news, they were motivated by care and love for other souls and they were motivated by the love and inspiration the vision of the pure church the true church of God it inspired the zeal and mission it was a powerful motivator and as they evangelized that church was built and other people could see the glory of that church as people lived righteous lives and people were set free from sin and people lived holy and people lived peacefully and people loved each other and the glory of that church shown forth and it attracted more people and it was a glorious and it was a positive feedback loop in Anabaptist evangelism thought I might have run out of time Peter read them on, said it this way the church of Christ is the basis and ground of truth a lantern of righteousness in which the light of grace is born and held before the whole world that its darkness, unbelief and blindness might thereby seen and made light and learned to see and know the way of life therefore is the church of Christ in the first place completely filled with the light of Christ as a lantern is illuminated and made bright by the light that his light might shine through her to others sometimes we hear people say that focus on the church is opposite of focus on evangelism that those two are not not complementary and they don't work together and if we're focused on the church it's a wrong focus and we're just focusing on ourselves and all of this and we need to be focused on evangelism and that can be true that can certainly be true but I think that maybe we need to give that idea a little more thought maybe making the church glorious maybe increasing brotherly love in the church maybe making so the church is more pure and more holy is the best thing we could do for evangelism I don't know very many of you I don't know what your congregations are like so I'm just going to say this and if this applies to you then you could take it from the Holy Spirit but maybe the best thing you could do right now for the long term benefit of your evangelistic success is to go home and work on relationships at church maybe that's the best thing that you could do right now if you have broken relationships at church if you have a bad witness at your church if your church is not what it should be that it's not attractive that you feel you couldn't tell someone come to my church it's a good place to be maybe that's the most wonderful and best and most impactful thing you could do for evangelism because brothers and sisters the lantern never showed anybody light the lantern never gave anybody light in the dark room the lantern is us but it's the light of Christ inside that gives the light that shows the path of life that gives light to the people in the dark room and if there's no light in your lantern you're not going to have evangelistic success you're not going to know what to do with people when they ask where can I go to church but if you go home and make sure there's light in that lantern then all the world can see and as Jesus said, ye are the light of the world not you are the light of the world not Andrew is the light of the world but ye, plural, ye are the light of the world a city that is set on a hill cannot be hid neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel but on a candlestick and it gives the light unto all that are in the house let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven