My Bible has in its margin, for the word slaughter, murder. Threats and murder. Persecution will happen once again in Israel. Perhaps you might think that this sorry performance was stopped at the end of the first century. Not so.
Many of you are familiar, or at least familiar with the title of a book called Fox's Book of Martyrs. Some of you may have even read it. I did at one time, about 30 or 40 years ago. It's a book that focuses on the persecution, including martyrdom, that raged against Evangelical groups.
I have another book in my library titled Martyrs Mirror. I'm showing it here to the congregation. It's almost as large as Strong's Concordance. Martyrs Mirror is a comprehensive history of 1600 years of persecution, including martyrdom, perpetrated against Anabaptists groups. Not Evangelical, but Anabaptists. The Evangelical was different in most respects from the Anabaptists.
Anabaptists is a name attached by the world at large against any Christian group that opposes infant and child baptism. Ana, meaning against - against infant and child baptism. The Anabaptists did not call themselves Anabaptists. The world called these people Anabaptists.
You might wonder why Anabaptists refused to baptize infants and children. It was because the biblical requirements for baptism are repentance and faith, and no infant or child can meet those requirements. One must be an adult of considerable living experience in order to seriously consider baptism.
The most prominent Anabaptists groups in the Western world today are probably the Amish, the Mennonites, and the Hutterites. There are many others though that are smaller, but all of these groups have been fairly active, even up to the beginning of the 20th Century.
By definition, the term Evangelical and the term Anabaptists can, and did, include groups like the Baptists, and most importantly, the Church of God. We are, by their definition, Anabaptists.
Martyrs Mirrorbegins its story of the martyrdom of the apostles, because they were, by definition, Anabaptists. Religious persecution periodically raged in Holland, France, and England - all Israelitish countries - for long periods of time during the Middle Ages. Those persecutions only waned after the Protestant Reformation was underway for over a century, and was then joined by the Catholics' Counter Reformation.
Anybody who knows any American history should be able to understand that very many of the early settlers of this country came because of religious persecutions in Northwest Europe. The Puritans and the Pilgrims are the prime example. They first fled England, and then left for Holland. They then left Holland and came to the United States.
Now to think that the Israelitish people are somehow above perpetrating religious persecution is not historically accurate. The Bible shows that it clearly has happened before, and it will happen again. Just in the last ten years the entire nation witnessed the Branch Davidian group massacre in Waco, Texas. And interestingly, the Branch Davidians were Sabbath keepers.
