PILGRIM WITNESS / 500 YEAR ANABAPTIST ANNIVERSARY SERIES David Sweigart
Good Week Morning Readers!
I came across a historical sketch of Menno Simons which I’m including strictly FYI. Those Protestant swaths forthcoming from their Reformation & Anabaptist roots are wide when you include all the Baptist and similar offshoots, whereas the Menno Simon’s variety would be declining worldwide if it were not for the conservative Mennonite & Amish higher birthrates and their stand against doctrinal error which compromises faith and leads to apostasy. merlin
It is important to understand that the Anabaptist movement began in two separate areas in Western Europe – Switzerland and the Netherlands. In Switzerland, they were known as the Swiss Brethren. Several years after the beginnings of the Anabaptist movement in Switzerland, the movement reached the Netherlands through the influence of a wandering preacher with a Lutheran background named Melchior Hoffman. Hoffman had fanatical notions about the earthly kingdom of God, which bore fruit and culminated in what became known as the Munster tragedy. Two men influenced by Hoffman, John of Leiden and John Matthys, established their “kingdom” in the city of Munster. They instituted a reign of terror for about a year until the opposing forces annihilated them and the few holdouts with them. While they could be called Anabaptists because they were re-baptized at the beginning of this saga, they obviously did not stay true to other Anabaptist principles.
Among the many baptized by Hoffman or his followers, a pair of brothers became very significant: Obbe and Dirk Phillips. These two brothers and their followers, who opposed the violence and fanaticism of the Munsterites, became known as the Obbenites, who are rightfully considered the founders of the Dutch Mennonite movement.
Even today, any new movement must come to terms with its fringe elements and tendencies. The aforementioned Munster incident was one of those divisive elements. Some held to hyper-literal interpretations of the Gospel. The fledgling Anabaptist movement needed a leader to stabilize and unify the cause.
In 1536, it had been traditionally accepted that Obbe Phillips baptized a former Roman Catholic priest named Menno Simons, who was born in 1496 in the Dutch town of Witmarsun. Menno was ordained a priest in 1524 but was not serious about life. He involved himself in partying, cards, drinking, etc. However, events in his life led him to begin to question the Catholic practices of transubstantiation. “… during the first year (as priest) he was suddenly frightened. While he was administering the Mass he began to doubt whether the bread and the wine were actually being changed into the flesh and blood of Christ. First he considered these thoughts the whisperings of Satan; but he was unable to free himself through ‘sighings, prayers, and confessings.’”
He struggled with his doubts for two years. Finally, picking up a Bible and beginning to read, he discovered that the teachings of the Catholic church were incorrect. Several events also were instrumental in bringing him to a crossroads of faith. News of a public beheading reached him and disturbed him because the reason fro the beheading was rebaptism. A second baptism seemed a strange doctrine to him. He had never doubted infant baptism. In his hometown of Witmarsum about 300 Muensterites took over a monastery and tried to defend themselves against the governor, but all were killed, probably including his own brother. The news of Muenster and the Hoffman/Muensterite prophets’ influence prompted him to speak out publicly against these fanatical excesses.
Finally, in January of 1536, he made the break – closing the door to a priestly career and a life of ease and pleasure and instead embracing the cross of Christ, a wanderer with a price on his head. “I voluntarily renounced all my worldly honor and reputation, my unchristian conduct, masses, infant baptisms, and my unprofitable life, and at once willingly submitted to distress and poverty, and the cross of Christ.” He spent a year in seclusion studying Scripture, and around 1537, Obbe Phillips ordained him.
He was a hunted man with enemies everywhere – Roman Catholic traditionalists and other Reformers on one side and fanatics on the other. But he had a burden for the souls of men, the common people who found themselves caught in the middle of the swirling winds of change. “Thus reflecting upon these things my soul was so grieved that I could no longer endure it. I thought to myself – I, miserable man, what shall I do? If I continue in this way , and live not agreeably to the word of the Lord, according to the knowledge of truth which I have obtained; if I do not rebuke to the best of limited ability the hypocrisy, the impenitent, carnal life, the perverted baptism, the Lord’s supper and the false worship of God, which the learned teach; if I , through bodily fear, do not show them the true foundation of the truth, neither use all my powers to direct the wandering flock, who would gladly do their duty if they knew it, to the true pastures of Christ – Oh, how shall their shed blood, though shed in error, rise against me at the judgment of the Almighty, and pronounce sentence against my poor miserable soul.”
BOTTOM LINE:
Menno Simons was a humble servant of the Lord, willing to serve but painfully aware of his inadequacies. As he reflected on the needs of the poor, straying flock who as a sheep without a shepherd, he wrote, “My heart trembled in my body. I prayed to God with sighs and tears, that He would give to me, a troubled sinner, the gift of his grace, and create a clean heart within me, that through the merits of the crimson blood of Christ, He would graciously forgive my unclean walk and unprofitable life, and bestow upon me, wisdom, Spirit, candor and fortitude, that I might preach his exalted and adorable name and holy word un-perverted, and make manifest his truth to his praise.”
TO BE CONTINUED IN Part B