I grew up when TV was first starting. My favorite shows were Lone Ranger, Gunsmoke, Hopalong Cassidy, Davy Crockett, Rifleman—all had good guys vs. bad guys. It was easy to figure out who the good guys were, and who the bad guys were. When I grew up, things like that got complicated and weren’t clear anymore. To show you what I mean, I’d like to tell you a story about the later medieval period. When who were the good guys and bad guys not only weren’t clear, but some of them changed from one to the other…
First, a definition: A good guy, for my purposes, is a person or group who stays true to Jesus’ commandments—he is saved, he is born again. He is impassioned about his loyalties to Him—but, as Jesus commands, he does not hurt those he perceives as his enemies. Matthew 5:44:
But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you
If a person doesn't abide by Christ's commands, we may question his salvation, whether he has been the "good guy." Let's say he was violently brutal with his enemies, in a violent time period in world history. But we don't let him "opt out" of responsibility because he was in an impassioned period, where violence and lack of respect for human rights seemingly was the "rule." The idea is, you don't just fall into the world's culture. You obey His commands, so you resist the world's culture at critical decision points. Then we know you're the good guy.
During medieval times, the Catholic church was the only recognized Christian church--but their corruption dimmed their witness. Larger protesting groups were rising as early as the 1200s, but the Catholics persecuted them mercilessly, and they were snuffed out. The Spanish Inquisition was then set up, and there was the horrific torture and extermination of the Albigenses and the Waldenses. And we must not forget the earlier Lollards and John Huss--and Bible translator John Wyclif. The ones being persecuted and murdered were godly people. But they didn’t agree with all the Catholic doctrine, and paid with their lives. Feelings were strong. These events were 50-150 years before Martin Luther. Many of these people were burned alive at the stake, or targeted and slaughtered in Crusades ordered by Popes. The Pope also had wicked leverage on his side called “indulgences.” Indulgences supposedly reduced the time your loved ones spent in purgatory. These generally had to be bought (and became an important source of papal revenue), but wily Popes also gave them away to the “right” people as well—such as to common citizens who gathered up wood to help burn these Protestant heretics at the stake. They were also given to people who volunteered to go on Crusades; or he gave them to torture-Inquisitors.
On Halloween, 1517, Martin Luther tacked a list of 95 objections, mostly to indulgences, on the wall of a cathedral in Wittenberg, Germany. And thus the Reformation was actually born. Luther also translated the Bible into German, so for the first time, many people could read God’s Word. By 1540 all North Germany had become Lutheran. The Pope declared a Crusade on them, and after 9 years of bloody battle, a surprising event--a peace treaty won legal recognition of the Lutheran religion. Luther is definitely a good guy, right?
But here is where the story changes, and the playlist gets harder to tell. The only reason Luther stayed alive from the Catholics is because he had the backing of wealthy German princes, who protected him. The princes were still running a very profitable feudalism, where they effectively confiscated the people’s property under the agreement to protect them, making them poor for life. They worked the same property, and their profits went to the princes. (Some accused the princes’ willingness to follow Luther was not religious at all, it was just to get out of a burdensome Roman Catholic tax). So when in 1525, 300,000 of the people rebelled against the princes and their feudal suppression-- you might be surprised to learn that Luther not only backed the rich guys against the poor guys (the opposite of what Jesus would do, given His negative view about the rich who oppressed the poor), but he wrote letters urging the princes on to a killing frenzy. The title of his main paper was: Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants, and his hatred against the poor included the following sentences: “Let everyone who can, smite, slay, and stab, secretly or openly, remembering that nothing can be more poisonous, hurtful, or devilish than a rebel. It is just as one might kill a mad dog; if you do not strike him, he will strike you.” This bloodthirstiness was unnecessary, since the peasants had few real weapons or military experience—but Luther felt he had to make clear which side he was on. The “princely” soldiers slaughtered 100,000 of them before the revolt was quashed.
This ungodly hatred possessed Luther again in 1543, when he targeted his hatred for the Jews, and wrote a 65,000-word treatise, The Jews and Their Lies, calling them “a base, whoring people…full of the devil’s feces…which they wallow in like swine.” The Jewish synagogue was “an incorrigible whore and an evil slut.” He argues that their synagogues and schools be set on fire, prayer books destroyed, rabbis forbidden to preach, homes razed, and property and money confiscated. These “poisonous, envenomed worms” should be drafted into forced labor or expelled for all time. This hatred reached a peak when he suggested murder, saying “we are at fault for not slaying them.” God’s Word suggests that people who hate are unsaved. In I John 3:15:
Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.
Luther’s letter was, 400 years later, an excellent plan of action for Adolph Hitler, who fulfilled Luther’s insistent rant. Luther never repented from this horrible slander, writing yet more such poisoned letters just before his death. Thus, his evil works carried on long after his death, and he was quoted many times by Nazi propaganda in the 1930s and 1940s.
Did Martin Luther die an unsaved man? Ezekiel 18:24 is a good litmus test. Keep in mind the words “live" and “die” refer to heaven and hell:
“But when a righteous man turns away from his righteousness and commits iniquity, and does according to all the abominations that the wicked man does, shall he live? All the righteousness which he has done shall not be remembered; because of the unfaithfulness of which he is guilty and the sin which he has committed, because of them he shall die.
My next good guy/bad guy story is in Zurich, Switzerland. Rolling back the years again, when Catholics were in charge: At the same time as Luther began reforming Germany, Ulrich Zwingli was trying to do the same in Zurich, Switzerland. He urged his followers to read Scripture, a very anti-Catholic idea at the time. He was already an admired public figure, so the liberal Catholic magistrates in Switzerland gave him a free hand—as long as he didn’t suggest radical changes. But readings of Scripture caused him to request that the people be allowed to drink from the cup during the Eucharist—but the magistrates said No. He backed off, taking no further action. Further Scripture readings caused him to request the magistrates to cease the state-collected tithes (used to support the church). They said No again, and he backed off again. His disciples were now getting restless for reform, and nothing was happening. His disciples, upon their further Scripture reading, came upon a huge, heady question--what was the church, they asked? The procedure at the time was, every infant (except Jewish) was baptized, and was considered part of the church. This doctrine was initiated by the Catholics, of course—but it was not challenged by the Lutheran Reformers either. But some of the Zwingli disciples urged him to request the magistrates again (by the way, this seemingly odd practice was because civil and religious were the same government), this time to permit them to stop baptizing babies, but to change to a Biblical idea, baptizing people when they become believers, and are willing to be disciples of Christ. They decided that only the people who followed Christ's commands in Scripture, were the church. The civil court said “no” to this radical idea and Zwingli backed off--again. Now his disciples went public, talking about Scriptural reform, and about Catholic doctrine not agreeing with Scripture. So Zwingli was asked by the magistrates to calm his disciples down. He couldn’t. Hey, he taught them to read Scripture, right? Several of his followers now took a bold move--expressing their faith in Christ and His commands, they baptized each other. Since that was their second baptizing, they were called Anabaptists (which means “baptize again.”) The Anabaptists rejected that name, since they only felt that a single baptism, as believers, was properly Scriptural. They called each other Brethren—and started another Movement. From this movement, we have the Amish, the Mennonites, the Hutterites, the Swiss Brethren, and the Bruderhof. It was later called a “Radical Reformation.”
I want to assure you that they didn’t take up arms to defend themselves. They had a simple desire for the freedom to worship as they saw the Scripture. They did have some beliefs considered strange at the time—not taking oaths, not volunteering for military service (because they would have to kill people). But these were peaceful beliefs. So, these are good guys. And they remained good guys until the day they died—which, in many cases, was pretty soon. The magistrates reacted swiftly once they heard that they weren’t baptizing their babies and instead were baptizing adults. They were given one week to recant, or they would be thrown out of the community. If they tried to remain, they would be drowned. Either way they chose, they had to abandon their property--which the magistrates grabbed, and it was divided among the loyal Catholics who remained. So Anabaptists had to flee to other communities, where they were usually expelled--repeatedly. They were persecuted by Catholics and Lutheran Protestants alike for their “radicalism” (following Scripture was unacceptably radical). Men who attempted leadership of their groups got it harder--they were either drowned or tortured, and then burned at the stake. But even their enemies wrote what beautiful, godly, gentle people these were--but we still have to kill them, because they have the "wrong" doctrine.
The story for the Anabaptists ends well, in a way: they are still around. We snigger at them for the women’s headcovering (which happens to agree with I Corinthians 11:5-6) and modest clothing (I Timothy 2:9) and their radical “third world” standard of farming and living. Keep in mind, though: many thousands of them were murdered just because they were different. Even in London, when the Puritans ruled. Well, the Puritans were another story of twisting Jesus’ commands.
Well, wait, what happened to Zwingli, you might ask? Not surprisingly, he was opposed to his disciples making this radical move of baptism. (I suspect his reputation was more important to him). He made a decree in 1526 that urged their drowning. A cowardly act. I can think of one Scripture that he didn’t have the heart to believe in, Matthew 5:11-12. Persecution wasn’t his thing. For him to teach things is easy, but following through, taking up Jesus’ cross, knowing you will be expelled or killed, takes some guts:
“Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. 12 Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
In the end, he must have developed some spine: He died in armed conflict against canton magistrates when he was only 47. But he never led any “real-Christian” movements--but he did get some changes to liturgy and doctrine. Good guy or bad guy? A mixed bag. But, when you think about it, a mixed bag is what what most of us are--except Jesus. .
Acknowledgement: Dave Bercot, “Anabaptists” CD
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