Collectively Coming Out of Egypt

Still good morning to all of you. Look at my watch. Good to see you here on the last day of Unleavened Bread. My wife and I were talking as we came down the freeway that today's a more pleasant, warmer day. I always walk in and wonder, do I need my vest or not my vest? And this time I walked in and said, no vest needed. It'll be nice if we have an opportunity for fellowship afterwards. So it's all good to have you here. We've spent seven days now, or almost seven days, celebrating an annual Holy Day that pictures coming out of Egypt. And literally, on the first generation observance of this day, those people came out of Egypt today. They spent seven days trekking, and it was on this day that they passed the You Are Now Leaving Egypt sign, which was posted right down in the middle of the Red Sea. Prior to the Days of Unleavened Bread, each of us as individuals went through self-examination to look in life's mirror and ask the question, how am I leavened personally? And so for every one of us as we move toward the Days of Unleavened Bread, it's a personal journey. It's a time of reflection, a time of thought, a time of study, a time of pondering the question, what is my leaven? What leaven do I need to remove from my life? And it constitutes our individual journey out of Egypt.

But my question today on this last Day of Unleavened Bread is not about you, it's not about me, it's not about us as individuals, but it's about us as a body. How do we know, and the question for the day is simply, how do we know that we have come out of Egypt collectively?

You know, in our social calendar, meaning the national calendar, the celebrations and holidays that we keep as a nation, there are days that we may celebrate in individual ways, but there are days that are not about individuals. I think one of the best illustrations of a day that is widely celebrated, that is not about us as individuals, but it is about the It is about the nation in which we live declaring independence from the British Empire.

It's a collective day, it's about us. So we may have a picnic, we may go out with our family, we may have fireworks, we may do this and we may do that, but it's not about us as individuals, it is about us collectively. And there are some other national holidays that are the same. The day itself is to commemorate something that affects the entire nation. This week that we have been commemorating is one of those at a spiritual level. It's about us collectively.

I'd like you to turn back to 1 Corinthians 12. A couple of reminders, refreshers. They're scriptures that we know very well. But in stage setting for this message, they're principles that we need to look at once more. In 1 Corinthians 12 and in verse 12, it speaks of us. It says, For as the body is one and has many members, so all the members of that one body being many are one body.

So also is Christ. Are we individual members? Absolutely. Have we been individually called? Absolutely. Are we individuals in God's eye? No, we're not. We are members of a body. Romans 12. Paul made this comment to multiple congregations in different ways. These are simply two of those times when Paul drew the attention of the congregation to the reality that we are dealing with today. He said in Romans 12 and in verse 4, For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another.

Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them. And then he goes on from there to discuss other things. But he draws the attention again to the fact that we, yes, are individuals, but we are collectively one body. As Paul said in 1 Corinthians 12, the head of that body is Jesus Christ. Elsewhere it talks about different pieces of the body figuratively contending with one another.

Well, I don't want to be a foot. I want to be a hand. I don't want to be an ear. I want to be an eye. I don't want to be. And he goes through the realities that each of us has been given a particular assignment. Each of us has been given a particular place. And he says, even if you see yourself as the least member of the body, all the body cares about you. And he uses the illustration of a toe. And if you hurt a toe, the entire body sympathizes. There's no part of the body that is not sympathizing when you hurt a toe.

And yet when everything's functioning well, you know, think about a little toe. So he used the illustration to help us understand that we are all connected. And that connection makes us a body with Jesus Christ as the head, with the Holy Spirit as the life force. Just as breath makes the difference between whether this body is a corpse or whether it's living.

So the breath or the spirit gives life to the body. And as a result, once a year, it is fitting that we take a look at coming out of Egypt collectively. I don't know how much time you spent during this last week thinking about the principle of coming out. It has multiple faces. In fact, if you simply look at that aspect of our calling, it's more complicated than meets the eye at first look. This week, because the genesis of this Holy Day season is the departure of Israel from Egypt, it is easy to think in a singular fashion coming out of Egypt. And it's a metaphor that's a part of our entire lives.

When we say it to each other, we know exactly what we're talking about. Metaphorically, we know the origin of phrase. We know physically what happened. We know the history. And we also know how it affects us. And so we use that term metaphorically as we walk through the days of Unleavened Bread, that this is a time for us to come out of Egypt.

Have you ever stopped and asked yourself seriously and contemplatively what the church is? Here we are today at church. We use the term that way. We are meeting in a church. Our name is the Church of God. So the name gets used in multiple ways. I'm a member of the church. I'm attending church today. Where do you meet? Well, we meet in a church. Who are you? Well, we are the United Church of God.

Do you know what church means? Do you connect to church in the way that God intended all of us to connect with church? The term has been so widely used and so diversely used and so commonly used. I don't know how many people today, when they say, I am a part of the church, look at it as God looks at it. The meaning of the word church is a calling out. That's who you are. You are people who received a calling out.

That's the only reason the name is applied to you. Now, in our society over millennia, the word has been misdirected and so generally applied that people have lost what God intended from the very beginning. You look in your hymnal. I think it was page 169. We were singing it, I think, in Salem last week. It talks about the church as one foundation.

In the very first stanza, it says, she is His new creation by water and the word. It's a shorthand way of describing it. The water was simply the point in time where all of your preparatory work had come to an end. You had responded to your calling. You had examined yourself. You had reached repentance. And you said, now I'm willing to put the past behind me. You know, the water for us as individuals is no different than the Red Sea for the Israelites.

Once you pass through it, you're in a different world. And of course, the word is simply, I have devoted myself to taking this book and living by it. All of it. Not selectively, not piecemeal, but all of it. So when we talk about coming out, your very name is coming out.

That's your name. So when you use the word church, understand what you're saying. You're saying, I have been called out. There's no other reason even to use the label. You might as well say, well, I'm going to a meeting. I'm in a meeting hall. If you use the word church, understand what God is saying. Ecclesia, ecclesia, ecclesia, on whichever syllable you put the emphasis, doesn't really matter. It means a calling out.

Now this third aspect that we don't meet until the end of the book of Revelation, and I'd like you to turn to Revelation chapter 18, because by the time you get to the end of the New Testament, calling out now has reached the place where it has multiple layers. For the ancient Israelites, it was a singular layer. On the day of Pentecost in 3180, it was already two layers or more. By the end of Revelation, it had added additional layers.

In Revelation chapter 18, beginning in verse 1, it says, It has become the habitation of demons, a prison for every foul spirit and a cage for every unclean and hated bird. For all the nations have drunk of the wine or the wrath of her fornication, the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth have become rich through the abundance of her luxury. And I heard another voice from heaven saying, So we added another layer, didn't we?

Today, in the church, you can use correctly the term coming out of Egypt or coming out of Babylon interchangeably, and they would require the same activity. In terms of what it would require of you as an individual in your walk, it would require the same thing of you if you said, I'm coming out of Egypt. And somebody else said, well, I'm coming out of Babylon. Well, you're going to have to take the same highway coming out of either one. I know as we sit during the Passover, and this one was, I can't use the word, well, I can use unique, but unique in a narrow sense.

This was a unique Passover for me, except for one year when Diane and I had the flu during the Passover. We sat at home, both of us running about 102-degree fever on Passover night, and she looked at me and said, should we take the second Passover? And I said, well, I'm not horizontal, so why wait? So you and I are both running 102 fever. We can still read the Scriptures. We can still take the bread. We can still take the wine.

And we can still wash feet. So we had one Passover that was different. But other than that, this was the first time in 53 years that I wasn't officiating at a Passover. And I told my wife, I said, it's a very different feeling. I said, I enjoyed the feeling once I got used to it. It was nice to sit there, and rather than directing things, listening and absorbing things. But as I was listening and absorbing, in the latter part when Mr. Sexton and Mr. Reeves were taking turns reading between John 13 and John 17, they hit John 17. And when I got home, I thought, I need to sit down and read John 17 very carefully.

I've always appreciated John 17. To me, it would have been a phenomenal honor. From 13, 14, 15, 16, Christ was having a discussion with His disciples. At the end of chapter 16, they went from being participants to observers. In chapter 17, the entirety from verse 1 to the last is a prayer. It's a prayer to God the Father from Jesus Christ, His Son. And the disciples were honored and privileged to be able to sit and listen.

He didn't introduce anything new in the prayer that he hadn't already discussed with his disciples. So if you wish to do a study on what I'm about to tell you, you can expand it and cover everything from chapter 13 to chapter 17. But chapter 17 was special because it was a discussion between Father and Son. You know how many times—and that's a short conversation. The chapter's not that long. If you took your watch and did a mark and then started reading chapter 17 and then looked how long it took you to read, it'd only take you a couple minutes to read the whole chapter.

So it's not that long. You know how many times as Jesus was talking to his Father that he used the term the world as a term juxtaposed with his disciples? How many times he used the term the world as, my disciples are here and the world is here? Now he used the world in that prayer, speaking of the orb on which we live. He used it in a non-directed sense. But you know how many times he used it in a directed sense as a sense of, here are mine and on the other side, here is the world. Short prayer.

16 times Christ said to his Father, here are my disciples, here is the world. So we go back to what I said earlier when you use the term church. It is a calling out and you have been called out. The disciples preceded you. But as you look at these days of Unleavened Bread, you see the layers that you can think about? Coming out of Egypt. Coming out of Babylon. Being as an individual, one who received a calling out. And in being called out, now being placed by Christ in contrast to the world.

Let's pursue that last point. Christ describing his followers as called out from the world. There's a promise that we all know well. In fact, we know it so well. We don't necessarily need to turn there, but because of the importance of it to this sermon, I will turn there. It's a promise that is made in Matthew 16.

He said to Peter, I say unto you that you are a pebble. You're a rock. You're a rock that I could pick up and throw. And upon this Petra, this crag that looks like El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. It's a promise. I am going to have a calling out, and that calling out will have an anchor under it that is bigger than Mount Rushmore, larger than El Capitan, pick some other crag if you want to that impresses you for its massiveness, and nobody is going to knock it down.

How initially can we trace this body over time? You know, one of the great conundrums in history, in church history, is reading this Scripture and then saying, well, now, how do I prove it? It's a difficult thing to do. In fact, it requires a degree of faith, but I put to you that it requires less of a degree of faith than people have come to suppose.

So let's look at that body called out. We know who we are. We can trace very comfortably and very easily backward. In fact, we can comfortably move back through the entirety of the last century. That's a breeze. We can move ourselves back to the middle of the previous century. A breeze becomes a little more challenging going backward from that particular time. But once we get finished with John, Jude, and Revelation, and a little bit of the writings of Polycarp and Polycrates, as Hurlbut says, a curtain comes down on history, and when it rises, who is standing there behind the curtain is very different than who was there when the curtain came down.

But it doesn't change in one sense what we can do about it. So how initially can you trace this body over time? In one sense, easily, and in another sense, not as easily as we may think. We'll look at the not so easily first, and we'll look at the easily later in the sermon. History repeatedly tells us that identifying anyone out of step with the established church was difficult for primary reasons. If you take the time to sit down with just a handful, it would only take really two or three good historical sources on church history before you would already, by three, you would already see a pattern.

Because all of them are going to walk the same path. They're going to tell you that trying to trace people out of step with the established church is difficult for a very simple set of reasons. First of all, the established church burned everything that did not agree with them that they could find. And until Gutenberg came along, everything was handwritten. And so there weren't a lot of copies sitting around.

If you found someone who was heretical, you found what they had written, you got a hold of what they wrote, you put it to the flames, the likelihood of it being written again, especially if you prosecuted the person who wrote it, was very slim. Number two, most of the descriptions that remain of those people who were called out are from those who hated, mistrusted, and disagreed with them, who considered them and their beliefs heretical.

And as a result, even though in many cases they may speak of them, what they speak of them will be anything from absolute, total, complete nonsense to, in some cases, accuracy and everything in between. I was talking to my wife just about our modern times as a way of description, and how it is that records, even in the best of times, are less than perfect. I bought a book a couple of years ago now because it was an update of denominational history, and I collect denominational histories, meaning a guidebook to all the denominations.

And this was a new one, so I sent off to Amazon, got it, and I got to United Church of God. Because I knew it was going to be in there, and I got to United Church of God, and guess what I found out? I found out something that I had never known. Because here in the description of the United Church of God, I found out the United Church of God was a splinter that came out of the Philadelphia Church of God.

Now, I'd never realized that, so I got an education. Of course, my tongue is so far in my cheek, I probably look like I've got a tobacco jar in there. And I tried, and I thought, well, how do I find the e-mail address of the author?

In other words, just simply as a courtesy. Not as a matter of arguing with him or contending with him, but since I happen to know better than he does about its origin, to simply say, you know, in your next edition, may I suggest an edit to the article on the United Church of God?

And here are the details that could be added to the edit. If you look up on Google the question, who founded the United Church of God, you may come up with quite a surprise. Totally wrong, totally inaccurate, total nonsense. But you know, once something is written, the lazy writer simply looks for a source and then cites a source. And over time, that source becomes credible because nobody has challenged the source. If that happens today, and our day of rapid universal communications, think of it what it must have been like in earlier times.

I was talking to Diane. I said, you know, I still remember back in 1957, 1958, our first two years at the Feast of Tabernacles in Big Sandy, that the scuttle butt around the community in East Texas was the basin. I guess I should ask, how many of you have been to Big Sandy? You know, over time, fewer and fewer. It was shocking we met in Big Sandy for the last council meeting, and there were, I believe, two or three council members that had never seen Big Sandy.

So we took them there and showed them. There's a basin. There's an artesian well at the bottom of the basin. The old redwood tabernacle sits above it. It's not a very big basin, but it's a lovely little basin that they landscaped nicely in a spring in the basin.

The first couple of years I attended the Feast of Tabernacles, the scuttle butt around Big Sandy and Gladewater and Hawkins, the surrounding communities, was that basin is where we did our animal sacrifices. Now, you know, it's humorous to us because we were there for the Feast. We knew why we were there, what the local community thought didn't make any difference one way or the other. But it was amusing that you could be that close. And you know if somebody from the community had said, could I come on the grounds?

The answer would have been sure. We didn't have locked gates. In fact, we didn't have gates at all. There are gates there now, but there weren't gates at that particular point in time.

And so as you study the people described in Matthew 16, 18, part of the problem is working your way through what is said in an attempt to find the bottom line of what was fact and what was fiction. The third reason was that at various times in history, the less people knew who you were, the better off you were. And to commit something to writing was to put yourself in jeopardy. And so there are times where people simply didn't write for no other reason than the consequences of it being in writing. There's another complicating factor that I don't know if you've spent time pondering it or looking at it, but when you go back to the book of Revelation, the message to the seven churches in Revelation 2 and 3, there will probably, until the time of Christ's return, there will probably never be an end to the ponderings about whether the message to the seven churches is chronologically linear, or whether it's a collective smorgasbord that describes different groupings of people at any different time. But if you look at it as linear, it would make even more of a point to what I'm talking about right now. And if you don't, it still would make the point. So it doesn't matter how you look at Revelation 2 and 3, the point is the same. God's people, meaning those who have been called out, those called out have always been those called out. When you read Revelation 2 and 3, those called out have not always conducted themselves as if they were called out.

Put simply, all seven churches are not commended. In fact, six of the seven churches are given advice on how to get it better than what it is. And a couple of them are told, you are my church, but you are so far out of step with me that in the end of it all, a good number of you are going to pay with your lives for being that far out of step. And some I will preserve because they are still in step. So another challenge in identifying those who received a calling out, if you simply look at Revelation 2 and 3, not to our credit historically, we have not always acted according to our calling. We even see with one of the churches that says, you even allowed Jezebel. You allowed teaching of that sort within. I said, I didn't miss that. It didn't escape my vision. And it has consequences. With these things in mind, remember that there has been a church through the ages. It is a church that has been invited out of the world. And even to this very day, that church exists, and it has left a trail of evidence, which is instructional to those of us who are here today. I want to take what may seem to be a short shift. I have to get my S's lined up there. A short shift sideways. But in reality, it's not intended to be a shift. It's intended to be timely. We are still within the calendar year that marks the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. So it is a celebratory year. It began back in October, and it will end when this next October comes. That event was the greatest and so far the most permanent division within the Christian world. But the question is, because in many eyes the answer to this question would be yes, and I'm throwing it out to you for you to ponder. Would this division qualify as a calling out? So ponder that thought as we move forward. The name Protestant Reformation. You know, God has a quality where He names things what they are. And many times in human life we do the same thing. The name Protestant Reformation is instructional. It was born of protest.

Just as I said, if you know what your name means, your name means I have been called out. If your name is Protestant, it means that some time back in history somebody in your spiritual ancestry protested something.

You may have totally forgotten. In fact, I would imagine that many Protestants today don't historically know exactly what was being protested. If I said the tipping point was indulgences, and that was probably the tipping point to get the ball rolling, many people who are Protestant today wouldn't know what an indulgence is. But it was a fire, it was a flame that ignited a fire that could not be extinguished. And there were many other things also. Reform. Well, reform tells you what the objective or the goal was. Was the objective to come out?

Wasn't the objective. How far different bodies came out was up to them, but it wasn't the objective. It was a movement that was born of protest, and its aim from the beginning was to reform.

Any history of the 13th and 14th century gives you a record that will blow your mind. You know, there are people who are demagogues. The definition of a demagogue is somebody who stands up in a boat and rocks it and convinces everybody there's a storm. So if you need a picture of what demagoguery is, you don't have to be a demagogue to talk about the abuses of the 13th and 14th century. You simply have to have a history book. They would make the scandals of the televangelists of the late 1900s and the child molestation scandals of the late 1900s and early 20s look like kindergarten. Unless you've studied the history, you can't even wrap your mind around how absolutely total, universal, and all-pervasive the debauchery in and under the umbrella of the term church was leading up to the Reformation. If you did study it, you'd have no trouble understanding why there were people who wanted to see reform. The Reformation had different objectives, had different faces in different countries. One of the least noble faces is probably the genesis of the English Reformation, where, put in the simplest of terms, Henry VIII disfellowshipped the Pope and made himself the Pope. Now, there were hundreds and thousands, probably tens of thousands, of Englishmen who had other motives, purer motives, and among them were all sorts of parties. Among those parties were people who said, well, we are Puritans. Another said, no, no, we're separatists. The Puritans said, what we want to do is, now that the church belongs to England, we want to purify it. We want to take things that we don't think belong there, move them out, and move other things in. And the separatists said, in the spirit of you can't put new wine in old wineskins, we don't think it is purifiable. So we need to step outside and start all over again.

I was reading a history not too terribly long ago that said, if the Puritans had landed at Plymouth Rock, there probably would not have been a first Thanksgiving. Now, I don't think most Americans realize that in Massachusetts there were separatists and there were Puritans. The ones who landed at Plymouth Rock, that we refer to as the Pilgrims, were separatists. And they were a kinder and gentler people. The Puritans who landed elsewhere were not as kind and gentle. And so, you see, even as it bled over into our country, there were different faces and different fields. But at the end of the day, after tug and pull over decades, England settled down and basically kept imitations of many of the practices, of many of the investments, many of the services.

The Pope was exchanged, and today the monarch, the British monarch, is the head of the Church of England.

Back in Europe, Germany is considered the center of the Reformation. And there it was obvious from the study of history that the intent was simply to purify. In fact, there was not an intent among the early German reformers to abandon, but simply reform. The Church that came out of it as a product, though different from the Church of England in one sense, would not have existed without the patronage of kings and princes. And over time, until this modern secular age where some of the states are now divesting themselves of state religion, the Church that was founded from the German Reformation was the state church of multiple nations in Europe, just as the Church of England is the state church of England. The Swiss, the Dutch, and the Scottish went further. They abandoned many of the ceremonies, many of the forms and functions, in some cases abandoned the architecture and the architectural styles, abandoned the vestments, the robes, and the gear that identified someone as clergy or deacon or whatever office.

But when the dust settled on the Reformation, what we need to understand, brethren, as we keep these days of unleavened bread, as people who have been called out, is that none of the Reformation efforts changed core doctrines or customs. That no matter what the brand or what the label or what the identifier is for someone who identifies themselves on the genealogical tree as a body that came from the Reformation, none of it changed core doctrines or customs. The point being that the Reformation under close inspection would never qualify as a calling out. It was accurately what it claimed to be. And in that regard, there is honesty in advertising and honesty in communication. It was a reform born from protest, but it was not a calling out. So if the Reformation and all that it produced was not a calling out, who were called out and how were they identified? What's interesting and sad about the Reformation that any student of the Reformation would be well aware of was the level of intolerance that was universal. Catholics martyred Protestants. Protestants reciprocated and they martyred Catholics. Swiss reformers martyred Swiss that they didn't agree with. German reformers martyred German reformers that they didn't agree with. And so as you look at the time, it's a sad time where intolerance was the hallmark that marked everyone.

If you did not agree with me and I had enough secular power, then you would pay for it in some fashion.

As a result, with the reformers at odds with one another, there was a place where they shared a common ground. And so it didn't matter who you were, meaning what national body of Protestant you were or Catholic. It was one thing they all shared in common. And that is that they all persecuted, without exception, those who were called out. You know, we read Hebrews 11, and because it's written in the time that it's written, we read it looking backward. Hebrews 11 is, because of the way it's written, it is a backward look.

But it has a forward-looking element, and that's how the chapter ends. In Hebrews 11, beginning in verse 36, as the author is summing things up and then transitioning from past to present to future, he says, As it transitions in verses 39 and 40, at that particular point, you could add those from the time of Christ to the present day, and they would fit under the same umbrella of verses 36 and 37.

They did wander. They were nomads. They were prosecuted. One of the great realities that you find within the history of the church is that people were smart enough to realize that when persecution rose to an intolerable level, it was time to pack and move. And the best place to move was as far out in the suburbs as you could go so that it was inconvenient to go after you. It is really no mistake in any way, shape, or form that when people try to trace the history of called-out ones, that one of the places they focus on are the valleys of the Swiss Alps.

If you have been to Europe, you understand that there is no place inside of Europe that is more difficult and less desirable to get into by foot or by heart. It is more of a horse than the inner remote little valleys and hillsides in the Swiss Alps. So for people to simply say, let me go, where it is simply too difficult and not worth the effort to come and find me.

And in some cases, it was simply a matter of saying, if that doesn't work, I will simply move as far east or as far west as I need to until I am so out in the boonies that nobody really cares. Those were the wanderings of the Dark Ages. Those were the wanderings of that time. You know, some things we take for granted. I want you to turn back to Galatians 5. As I, by implication, am talking about, or at least setting the stage, talk about physical markers that would identify those who received a calling out, the biggest identifier has nothing to do with that.

And it's an identifier we take so much for granted that we do a shoulder shrug and never really plug it in. But it is the statement that is found in Galatians 5. And when you get there, you say, oh, I know that.

And the answer is, sure you do. You all know it. Galatians 5, 22, and 23 is the greatest identifier. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such, there is no law. You know, brethren, called-out ones have been visible by these evidences of the Holy Spirit for the last 2,000 years, even to their bitterest enemies. In fact, I'll read you a couple of illustrations where those whose job and assignment was to put them to death before putting them to death identified that these were their qualities and then put them to death.

I remember years ago, my father lived in Wisconsin Delves for 14 years on the festival site. He handled the festival site and then he handled housing for multiple sites around the United States, so he traveled a lot. But he was resident in Wisconsin Delves, and over 14 years became a part of the community. And toward the latter part of that, I was going with him on one afternoon and we went to see one of the hoteliers, one of the large hotels. And his comfort level with my dad allowed him to get into a conversation that, to me, was eye-opening and chilling at the same time. It was during a time in the history of our former affiliation where there had been, well, it was before the era that was described as getting the church back on the track.

Okay? This man sat down, or we stood, but this man stood talking to us and he identified with such clarity, it was chilling. The spiritual condition of the church from observing each year's feast attendees. And though he didn't know the labels that went with it, he knew the fruit. He knew when we were zealous, he knew when we weren't, and he knew it by year. And as I sat and listened, I thought, this man has absolutely no inside track. He has no literature.

He doesn't receive our worldwide news. He doesn't receive this or that or letters or all the rest. And yet he reads us like a clean sheet of glass. Never discount throughout all of time that Galatians 5, 22, and 23 identify those who are called out and identifies even the state or the status that they are in. Coupled with what I've just read to you are practices that conform to Scripture and the two work in tandem.

Through Christian-era history, those called out are usually seen when their beliefs are in conflict with the established church. There was a time during the Reformation, as I said, where all the protesters and those they were protesting against were unified in their persecution of one body of people. Now, the label they placed upon that body of people was Anabaptist. And the label was placed on them for a reason. Because they jeopardized a very serious series of core doctrines by their practices.

They said, we do not believe that an infant is truly baptized. They were called rebaptizers. They said, we're not rebaptizers. Because we don't consider that an infant was ever baptized in the first place. We know you do, but you've mislabeled us because in our culture that was a worthless exercise. Baptism is for an adult. It's for someone who can reason, who can think, who can go back to Luke where Christ said to his disciples, count the cost.

You must love me more than mother, father, sister, brother, husband, wife, yea, more than your own life, or you're not worthy to be my disciple.

A babe in arms cannot weigh and measure those things. Sprinkling a little water on a baby, taking a cup, and pouring a little water over the top of their bald head, it's not baptism. Burial is burial. Nobody buries a corpse by throwing a shovel full of dirt on their body and walking out of the cemetery. It doesn't work that way. And so it wasn't baptism. The person was not qualified for baptism. And the motivation, the motivation being we need to baptize this infant because if this human being dies, unbaptized, they will burn forever in the fires of hell. And the Anabaptists said, there's not an ever-burning hell. This is not baptism. And that human being is not qualified or capable of making the adult decision necessary to be baptized. And for that position, they were martyred. And it was indiscriminate. It didn't matter who it was. Swiss reformers martyred them, German reformers martyred them, English reformers martyred them, and Catholics martyred them.

Very rare are there confessions of faith. But one individual was appointed by his co-followers in a northern Swiss village just inside of Switzerland from the German border named Michael Sattler to put together what was called the Schleitheim Confession, named after the little community where they were. And as you listen, you'll have to work with the wording, but as you listen, you will see a set of beliefs that they confess that have been durable throughout all of the history of called-out ones. Baptism was to be administered to believers only. Infant baptism is not practiced. Disfellowshipment is observed within the Church after a first and second private warning to reform life. The bread and wine should only be broken by baptized believers. Fruit Church should be separated from the world's system, including, you have to understand the context, church attendance means, at that time, they were living in countries where it was not a place to be. It was mandatory. You will attend the state-sanctioned church. So when they say a true believer should be separated from church attendance, you have to understand the context. They all attended church. They didn't go to church. True Christians should be separate from the world's system, including church attendance, oaths, and the sword. There should be shepherds among the flock who will preach and will be supported by the church. If a pastor is taken from the flock, another should be ordained in his place. The sword, that is, the magistery of rulership is outside of Christ's perfection, and it is to be left to the world to exercise. The church simply realized this is not the day. They understood what Christ said when He said to Pilate, My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, then this would be the status. They said, We recognize that, and we live in a way that we honor the right and the privilege of the government to exercise the functions of government. Christians should not exercise self-defense, nor become magistrates, nor use the secular sword against spiritual offenses. In number 7, Christians should not make an oath, but let their yes be yes, and their no be no.

You know, the fundamentals of what I read there, which represented an Anabaptist Swiss body, are all in one form or another a part of our statement of belief. If outside, I didn't take a look, but yeah, I can see the booklets. If you went out and got our statement of belief booklet, sat down with the Schleitheim Confession, read our statement of belief.

Nothing's changed. It's 500 years ago. Edward Gibbon, talking about the church while it was still in its infancy, the first few hundred years, made the following comment.

The Christians were not less averse to the business than to the pleasure of the world. The defense of one's person. This is the fifteenth chapter of Gibbon's decline and fall of the Roman Empire and the birth of Christianity. And it's describing what a Christian looked like in Rome. The defense of our persons and property, they knew not how to reconcile with the patient doctrines, which enjoined an unlimited forgiveness of past injuries and commanded them to invite the repetition of fresh ones. Their simplicity was offended by the use of oaths, by the pomp of magistory, and by the active contentions of public life. Fourteen hundred years, actually fifteen hundred years, separates the first century church from the Schleitheim Confession. And yet the statements are identical. Nor could their humane ignorance, this is condescension, if you didn't catch that, nor could their humane ignorance be convinced that it was lawful on any occasion to shed the blood of our fellow creatures, either by the sword of justice or by that of war, even though their criminal or hostile attempts should threaten the peace and safety of the whole community. The Schleitheim Confession simply said, we honor and respect the right of the state to do those things. We are not a part of the state.

So as Gibbon is condescending toward first century Christians, those in Schleitheim simply added the qualifier, we are good citizens. We're honorable, we're decent, we're law abiding, and the system is the system. It was acknowledged that under a less perfect law, the powers of the Jewish constitution had been exercised with the appropriate approbation of heaven by inspired prophets and anointed kings. Meaning in the Old Testament times, it was a different system. You know, it's funny, some of those who were members of those called out ones are labeled by their accusers as only using the New Testament. If you read a history and you say, now how does that fit with what we believe?

One inquisitor who was responsible for putting them to death, then said of one of them who supposedly only abided by the New Testament, that he was in awe of the fact that he had memorized and could quote every word in the book of Job. Why would you memorize and quote every word in the book of Job? If according to your accuser you only used the New Testament?

It was a classic example of the conflict because the Roman state used the Old Testament books of kings and chronicles to justify their going to battle and putting to death all their enemies. Those who were called out appealed to the New Testament and said, this is not who we are. And so the church accused them, the established church accused them, of what you don't use, the Old Testament.

It had nothing to do with reality. It had to do with the fact that because you don't agree with us, we then will brand you accordingly.

The Christians felt and confessed that such institutions might be necessary for the present system of the world, and they cheerfully submitted to the authority of their pagan governors. But while they inculcated the maxims of passive obedience, they refused to take any active part in the civil administration or the military defense of the empire.

First century. A book that I would recommend to those who are interested in looking and following this down the line of the Hallmark Doctrine that has identified those in the church of God being the Sabbath, which God says is a sign between him and his people.

It would benefit by looking at the works of J.N. Andrews and his book on the history of the Sabbath.

Diane and I lived in northern Indiana, served the border land between Indiana and Michigan, and inside of our church area was Andrews University, which is the oldest university of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. And it was named Andrews University in respect for J.N. Andrews, who was considered one of the greatest scholars of early Adventism when it came to the proof and documentation of practice. Andrews, in his volume, probably has, I don't know how many, hundred bibliographical citations. And so it isn't a book where, let me just give you what I believe, it is a book where I will give you historical sources from the early church fathers all the way up to the modern times, and I'll give them to you by the hundreds. Anecdotally, it is interesting, during a time when Europe was involved in the control of religion, and those areas outside of Europe were not significant enough to be bothered with, that sitting of all places on the western Indian coast, an area called Malabar, that includes Calcutta today, and the cities down the coast, were a body of Armenian Christians who had kept the Sabbath for 1,400 years. Until finally, a Portuguese sailor was able to make it around the bottom of Africa and up on the other side, and the Pope then partitioned the world between the Spaniards and the Portuguese and gave one half the world and the other half. And once that was done, the Portuguese came in, called in the inquisitors, and put to death those who kept the Sabbath. They said, for 1,400 years, this has been who we are. They claimed that Bartholomew, one of the twelve apostles, had founded the area, and they had been faithful to it ever since. They had 15,000 congregations in Malabar, just in that one location. The Abyssinians, cloistered in Africa, out of the direct light of Europe, and even the Ethiopians, better known, but still out of the mainstream, made the same claim. That they, for the last 1,400 years, had been observing the seventh-day Sabbath, and they too, like those in Malabar, were put to the sword for obedience to the seventh day, or given the opportunity to recant. And of course, you would have both. You'd have those who died for their belief or recanted their belief. I'm going to read just a couple of very short comments from Milner's religious denominations of the world. This is about all the denominations in the world, and Milner, at the very end of it, wrote an appendices, and he simply said at the appendices that I need to update with the best scholarship of the current time, the facts, because this is an updated edition. of the denominations of the world. And as such, I need to bring it up to date. And he has a 10-page article on the Waldensians. The Waldensians have been an interesting body. They have been people that, in our early correspondence course lessons, we attributed true church status to. And others then have said, well, have you really studied the Waldensians? Doctrinally, they don't fit. The Waldensians, from the time of the Reformation, became Calvinist. And from the time of the Protestant Reformation onward, there is nothing to be proven regarding an Waldensian.

What was interesting is the following comment. It seems to be a serious mistake into which some popular writers have fallen who represent the Waldensians as originating in France about the year 1160 and deriving their name from the celebrated Peter Waldo. The evidence is now ample that so far from being a new sect at that period, they had existed under various names as a distinct class of dissenters from the established Church of Greece and Rome in the earliest ages. It is an egregious error to suppose that when Christianity was taken into alliance with the state by the emperor Constantine in the beginning of the 4th century, that all of the Orthodox Churches were so ignorant of the origin of their religion as to consent to the corruption of a worldly establishment. Now, you know, this is a testimony to those of you sitting here because you went through exactly the same thing. And for some reason, when you were given permission to stop keeping the Sabbath, to eat unclean meats, and to stop keeping all these holy days, that for some silly reason you decided that wasn't what you were called out to, and so you're sitting here, where you could be going to church on Sunday, eating what you want, forgetting seven days without donuts and cinnamon rolls and black forest cake and all the other things. Whatever you lust after. Crants in the history of the United Brethren says, And what he's saying here is somebody by the name of Leo said, In 321 Constantine said, He didn't even have our Lord at that time. His Lord was Apollo. He wasn't converted for another 15 to 20 years to what he was converted to after he declared it the Lord's Day. And any study of Constantine's life says Constantine was never converted to anything. Another 30 some years later at the Council of Laodicea, the next step was ratcheted up to where you were no longer free to rest on the Sabbath. The Sabbath was now declared a workday by the decree of the Council of Laodicea, and if you did not work on that day, it was time to move. And as a result, people moved.

They moved out into the heath, out into the country, out into the boonies.

The author goes on to state that, As is true in most times when people are not happy with a group of people, they give them the name of whatever they feel is pejorative. I am a member of the Church of God, but for many years I was called an Armstrongite. The only reason for calling me that is because it was a way of saying, In the early day of Adventism, they were called Russellites because Russell was their founder. In the early Adventist, Millerites after William Miller. And so, throughout time, people have been called simply by people who don't like them, rather than give you the respect of calling you whatever name you call yourself. We're going to call you by the name of whoever we think you ought to be named after. And the author of this appendices on the Waldensians simply goes through and says, You know what? You can call them Henricians, you can call them Paulicians, you can call them Cathari, you can call them Albigenses, you can call them Waldenses, you can call them whatever you want. These people fundamentally had the same beliefs and the same practices. They've been labeled in each generation by whoever it was that saw what town they were in. So they were Leonists from Lyon, or by who they saw as the dominant teacher, Petrobrugians, after Peter de Bruz. As some of their very inquisitors, those who were responsible for putting them to death, said, they said the Waldensians were around 400 years before Peter Waldo was born. Because Waldensian meant Waldo's or Waldensians, meaning the valleys, those hiding places in the Alps where people who followed the way of God could hide from persecution. And he says, they've been up there for centuries, and their name does not come from somebody who came along later.

The very inquisitors who sought to persecute them, commended them. Renarius Sacco, who is a well-quoted inquisitor who was responsible for investigation, laying charges for prosecution, and even some of the civic leaders said to these people, were it not for their heresy, they are better citizens than our own. They are more honorable, they are more decent, and they are more law-abiding than our very people. Unfortunately, their beliefs are wrong, and that is fatal. Rather than throughout time, people in every century have experienced the honor and privilege of being called out.

You and I are those who have been given that privilege today. As we walked through this last week, I'm sure, and not incorrectly, I'm sure that much of our focus, if not all of our focus, was on individually how do I draw closer to God, and how do I come further out of, and you can fill in the blank. Egypt, of course, because of these days, would be what we would put in that blank.

We should remember, as we do on the 4th of July, or Memorial Day, or Veterans Day, or some of these national days, that honor a collective event that represents the whole nation. That this is one of those days that represents all of us, represents all of us as a body. It is every bit as important that we collectively come out and maintain that identity as it is that we individually come out and maintain one-on-one that identity with God.

And so I hope I've given you something to reflect on as we finish the Days of Unleavened Bread, as we move toward sunset this evening, and we move then into a view toward the next Holy Day coming up down the line, that we are a body. We're united by a common spirit, by a common head, by an absolutely awesome gift of a common understanding. An understanding that gives us a goal, a direction, doctrines, practices, and beliefs that are consistent with that goal and that doctrine. And we should always prize them and hold them in the highest of regards.

Thank you.