Apologetics from an Anabaptist perspective
Many of the Old Testament prophets died for the things they said. They were speaking the truth that God had revealed to them by His Spirit and the leaders of the people could not stand to hear that truth. So they killed the messengers of God thinking that would bring them peace.
The Jewish leaders in Jesus day did the same. Jesus was a threat to their positions and the respect the people had for them, so they killed the messenger. We should not be too harsh in blaming Pilate, he seems to have understood better what Jesus was up to than did the Jewish leaders.
Most of the apostles died as martyrs; people could not accept their message, so they killed the messengers. That has continued through history. The Roman Catholic church probably killed more Christians than pagan empires ever did. After the Reformation the Protestant churches continued the slaughter of Christians who would not accept their compromises.
Worth killing for
The reason for the killing of peaceful Christians has always been that other people saw them as a threat to their authority and position. Not that peace-loving Christians were ever a physical threat. Their offence was that they refused to mix the values of the world with the teachings of Jesus Christ; this was a stinging reproof to those who did. So they have tried to silence and eliminate the messengers.
Worth keeping quiet about
The German pietists thought they had found the solution. They would be outwardly members of the Lutheran church and inwardly born again believers in Jesus Christ. They would attend the Lutheran services, take communion, baptize their babies, get married in the church, then meet privately to share their faith. They called themselves “the quiet in the land.” Some Mennonite groups have also thought this was a good idea. Since they were no longer messengers, they were not in danger of persecution, or even ridicule, for the cause of Christ.
Light and salt
Light is what reveals both truth and error. To be quiet about our faith is to put our candle under a bushel and rob those around us of light.
Salt is what preserves from spoiling. In Old Testament times all sacrifices were salted in order not to offer to God something that was beginning to putrefy. If we feel free to indulge in the unfruitful practices of the world, where is the salt the world needs?
Be always ready
1 Peter 3:15 But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.
People wonder about us, form conclusions from our silence that impute the things that we do to factors other than a faith in Jesus Christ. When they ask questions, they often don’t know quite what to ask. Let’s not leave them in confusion. We don’t have to be pushy or difficult, but let’s be willing to talk about our faith, nor our culture or our lifestyle.
Perhaps some day that will put our lives at risk. If so, we are in the company of the prophets, apostles and saints of past generations.
One thing that is clear is that there were Waldenses before Peter Waldo, thus it cannot be said that he founded the Waldensian movement, or church. Waldenses, Vaudois in French, means “people of the valleys,” referring to the valleys in the Alps which form the border between France and Italy.
Peter Waldo, Pierre de Vaux in French, means “Peter of the valleys”. Research into his background has not turned up any trace that he originated from Lyon. The city of Lyon is near to the Alps and it is possible that he originated from among the Christians in the alpine valleys, then left to seek his fortune in the big city.
He made his fortune, but it appears his heart was not at rest. He heard the call of God to repentance and forsook all he had gained. Beginning around 1170, he held meetings in his home where he distributed both natural and spiritual food to the poor, having had the Word of God translated into their language. Then he went to Rome to seek approval of the Pope to continue this work of evangelism. The Pope refused to authorize what he was doing and at this point Peter Waldo appears to have realized there was no future for evangelical Christianity in the Roman church.
From here on the details get murky. He sought the believers in the alpine valleys, but did not remain there long. Perhaps he rekindled the missionary fervour of the Christians in those valleys. Subsequent history mentions appearances of Peter Waldo in other parts of Europe and of itinerant Waldensian missionaries everywhere. Despite living in an era of persecution, Peter Waldo travelled and preached among the common people without being betrayed. He died a natural death in Bohemia in 1217.
Wonderful as the story of Peter Waldo may be, it does not tell how the Waldensian church began. The excerpt from the article on Antichrist that I posted Saturday dates from at least 50 years before Peter Waldo and reveals a church already well established.
The Antichrist writing dates from the time of Pierre de Bruys; it is possible that he was the writer. Pierre de Bruys was a former Roman Catholic priest who became a very effective evangelist after his conversion. He was active from 1117 to 1131, when he was burned at the stake. There is a section of this writing which gives the “reasons for our separation from Antichrist.”
Another possibility would be Henri, a former Benedictine monk, who preached the same doctrine as Pierre de Bruys from 1116 to 1134. Henri died in prison in 1148. Or the writer may have been someone unknown to history. We mostly know Pierre and Henri to us through the records of their persecutors.
The Antichrist writing says the spirit of iniquity had been active for centuries in the Roman church, but lacked power to suppress all its opponents. It wasn’t until the 11th century that the Roman Catholic church controlled the secular authorities and could use them to eliminate their opponents. Persecution became much more acute, culminating in the Albigensian crusade (1209 to 1229) and the Inquisition in France which began in 1233.
The history of persecution by the Roman Catholic church began long before the year 1,000; it just wasn’t as thorough. The Roman church saw heretics everywhere. Some of them may well have been groups with non-Biblical beliefs and practices. Many of them, though, were genuine evangelical Christians, teaching and living the peaceful doctrine of Jesus Christ. It is from these Christians, in ways lost to history, that the Waldensian church had its origins.
[From a Waldensian writing dating from the year 1120. The historical belief of the Anabaptist-Waldensian-Mennonite faith is that Antichrist refers to a counterfeit of Christ.]
These things are the principal works which he commits against the truth, they being otherwise numberless and past writing down.
The Great Commission tells Christians to make disciples from all nations. In practice though, it seems many evangelical efforts have thought it sufficient to get a profession of faith from new believers, to make converts.
That’s only a beginning. If I stop at being converted, I am not sufficiently rooted and grounded in the faith to stand when faced with temptation or persecution. How is becoming a disciple different?
A disciple does not just want Jesus to be his Saviour, he wants Jesus to be Lord of his life. That goes beyond conversion to a full commitment—being willing to accept teaching and discipline from our Lord and Master.
That sounds like it will put a crimp in my free-wheeling lifestyle. In fact, it will put an end to my former lifestyle. Why can’t I have both? The peace and assurance of being a Christian, plus the fun and excitement of the way I used to live?
It doesn’t work. If I try to have it all, I wind up with nothing.
Jesus wants my full attention, my full allegiance. Perhaps that sounds painful, dull, boring.
Painful it may sometimes be, but following Jesus without reserve will not be dull and boring.
Being a disciple brings a different joy and excitement that I had known before. It brings assurance that my life, my future, is in the hands of a Master that knows the way ahead when I don’t have a clue what might be around the next corner.
Is there a greater thrill than to be a disciple of He who said: “All power is given to me in heaven and in earth”? When I don’t find it thrilling, the problem has always been in me, not in Him. If I follow Him at a distance, because of fear or doubt, I am not a disciple and Christian life isn’t very interesting.
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The title comes from a line in an art book published 25 years ago, titled If you’re not from the prairie . . . The art is by Henry Ripplinger and the poetic text by David Bouchard. Together they evoke childhood in rural Saskatchewan just as I remember it.
Another line in the book says “You’ve never heard grass.” People in other parts of the country know the sound of the wind in the trees. We don’t have many of those on the prairie. I remember warm summer days in my boyhood when I would walk through the pasture and hear the sound of the grass swaying in the gentle breeze.
Another favourite Saskatchewan book is the novel Who has Seen the Wind, byW. O. Mitchell. The description of the boy listening to the sounds made by the wind in the grass is picture perfect, a beautiful example of showing, not telling.
I have travelled across Canada, seen the Pacific in the west and the Atlantic in the east. I have lived in half of the provinces and I know there is wind everywhere. Yet there is something about the wind that blows across the flat prairie with few trees to impede it that speaks to me in a way that tells me that here I am at home.
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We don’t enjoy it when the wind blows at gale force for several days. But then, we don’t enjoy it either when it is a hot summer day, the mosquitos are around us like a cloud and there is not even a little breeze to blow them away. For better or for worse, the wind is part of what it means to be a flatlander.
By divine appointment, Peter was called to initiate the propagation of the gospel to the Gentiles. The divine nature of the appointment was unmistakable to both Peter and Cornelius.
Cornelius was the captain, or centurion of a band of 100 soldiers, a century. In the Roman army, six centuries made a cohort and ten cohorts made a legion. Caesarea was the headquarters of the Roman army in Judea. Thus Peter walked right into the heart of the Roman power structure to preach the gospel.
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The heart of Peter’s message is found in Acts 10:36: “The word which God sent unto the children of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ: (he is Lord of all).” This message that God first sent to Israel, He now called Peter to bring to representatives of the Gentile forces who ruled in Judea.
“He is Lord of all.” At the trial of Jesus before Pontius Pilate the Jewish leaders had rejected that claim, saying “We have no king but Caesar.” But Cornelius, a representative of Caesar’s authority, now accepted the claim of Jesus Christ to be his true Sovereign. The result was evident to all who were there, including the six Jewish believers who accompanied Peter to the home of Cornelius in Caesarea.
When Peter asked, “Can any man forbid water, that these should not be baptized, which have received the Holy Ghost as well as we?”, no objection was raised. The six who had accompanied Peter later testified convincingly to the church in Jerusalem that God had indeed granted repentance and salvation to these Gentiles.
How many people today would willingly accept the first half of Peter’s message, peace by Jesus Christ, but want no part of having Jesus as Lord of their life? May that not be the reason there are so many restless Christians today? It doesn’t work. True and durable peace is ours only when we willingly submit ourselves to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
I quit attending church when I left home. I had heard all the old familiar Bible stories that are taught in Sunday School. I had also absorbed a lot of contradictory teachings in school, through the media and through the books and magazines I read. I had begun to consider myself too intelligent to believe the Bible. Some parts of it were probably true. If there was a God, He probably inspired people in ancient days to write the good stuff, but there was a lot in the Bible that just wasn’t believable. Sound familiar?
I started to get curious, though, and wanted to take another look at the Bible for myself. I didn’t want to be seen buying a Bible, though. Neither did I want to ask my parents if I could borrow a Bible. But I knew the place in my parents’ home where the old worn-out Bibles were stored. One weekend when I was home, I went to that old cupboard, selected a Bible that was pretty much intact and not too big and packed it away in my stuff.
I began to read, trying to separate fact from fiction, searching out the accounts that I found unbelievable and reading them from beginning to end. I found references to these accounts in other parts of the Bible and read them carefully. As I read more and more in the Bible, trying to understand the context in which these events happened and what the Bible writers were saying about them, I started to get the uncomfortable feeling that this wasn’t going to turn out quite like I had expected. I could see that a life based on the teachings of the Bible would be an admirable thing, but all the stories that I didn’t want to believe seemed to be inextricably linked to those teachings.
Jesus evidently believed that all that was written in the Old Testament was completely factual. Was He deceived? If He was wrong about that, how could He be right about anything?
Slowly it dawned on me that this collection of books, written by 40 different men over a period of sixteen centuries, was not a collection at all, but one unified book. I could not choose to believe some parts and reject the rest as mythology or mere records of often bloody history. There were only two choices before me: believe it all from beginning to end, or dismiss it all as a work of fiction.
It was at this point that a crisis arose in my life and the Bible revealed to me that I was a sinner destined to be forever rejected by God, unless I repented. I repented, without fully understanding the significance or the ramifications of what I was doing. My life changed at that moment, yet it took months, years even, for the full reality of that change to sink in.
So here is my advice for anyone who wants to read the Bible but is afraid of getting confused. Read the Bible. Get the whole story.
Don’t trust any Bible reading plans that chop the Bible up into little pieces and have you skipping here and there without ever really getting a picture of what is going on. Don’t trust books about the Bible to steer you right. There are Bible dictionaries and Bible commentaries that can be helpful, but don’t start out letting someone else guide you through the Bible. Let the Bible reveal itself to you.
It might be good to read accounts here and there to start with, but soon you will want to read books of the Bible all the way through to get a grasp of the context. Pray for direction. Once you begin to get some sense of what the Bible is all about, it would be a good thing to read the whole Bible through. Don’t bite off too much at one time, expect it to take four years to make it all the way through. Along the way you will find that the Bible “heroes” were really not very good people. And if you are honest with yourself, just at the point where you become indignant about the weaknesses and failures of David, Elijah or Rebekah, you will begin to see the same weaknesses and failures in yourself. That is why Jesus had to die.
You will never understand it all, and that’s OK. The Bible never gets old; there is always something new to discover.
I believe it’s been five years since I last wrote about my weight loss progress, mainly because there wasn’t any progress to report. Things have gone better over the past two years and I have now lost 27 pounds (12 kg). That’s enough to get my pant size down to 36 from 40 and move me from the obese to the overweight category. I need to lose another 25 pounds to get to where I should be, which should bring me down to a 32 inch waist.
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Some years ago I was inspired to believe weight loss was possible by reading Calvin Nowell’s book, Start Somewhere: Losing What’s Weighing You Down From the Inside Out. In the book, he describes an incident where he saw several loose coins on the sidewalk and bent down to pick them up. As he did so, the thought came to him that he was “picking up change” and that was what he needed to do to make his weight loss effort work. Long term weight loss will not happen by taking some miracle pill or going on some miracle diet plan. It is a matter of “picking up change,” continuing to make small changes to your lifestyle that will become habits and help lose and keep off excess weight.
Corny as it sounds, “picking up change” is just what I needed to do. The changes didn’t come all at once; but every once in a while I would come to a plateau where I wasn’t losing weight anymore and I would find another change to make.
Here is a list of the changes that I have made, in the order that I made them:
1. I bought a mini trampoline, or rebounder, to use when I don’t go out for a walk.
2. I downloaded a pedometer app on my phone to track the steps I made in a day, aiming for 10,000 or more at least four days a week.
3. I cut out all between meal snacks and quit eating dessert at supper time.
4. I quit eating desserts altogether, except for meals with company.
5. I started wearing custom orthotics all the time. I had tried the cheap Dr. Scholl orthitics and for a time all was well. Then my knees started bothering me and I had to curtail my walking time. I went back to the custom orthotics and it took some months for the pain in my knees to go away. Lesson learned.
6. I started using maple syrup to sweeten my coffee. It has a lower glycemic index than sugar.
7. I stopped drinking pop. The only carbonated beverages I drink now are unsweetened Perrier water with a hint of citrus flavour.
8. I started drinking two glasses of water with every meal.
There it is, nothing miraculous, just slow and steady progress. Mostly it came down to harnessing my natural stubbornness for the cause of my health. I have two suits hanging in my closet. One is now too big and baggy to wear anymore. The other I haven’t worn for twenty years because I was too big and baggy to fit into it. I may just wear it to church tomorrow.
