Baptists didn't come out...

Kayla,

My son came up against this same problem in school a couple of years ago and he wrote a paper documenting the fact that there were several denominations that did not have their origin in the Catholic church or with the Protestant Reformation. If you would like I can see if he still has a copy of it and mail it to you.

Mark Osgatharp

 

How did it go down with the teacher? Hope he didn't get a hard time for it

Yours in Christ

Matt

 

if you can find this booklet it will explain history of baptists "The Trail of BLOOD" BY J.M. CARROLL
hope this helps you
God Bless

 

Kayla, here is a link to an on-line form of "The Trail of Blood", I've read it and think that it will be of great help.

Great call Jay.


Mark, if your son still has his paper I'd also be interested in reading it as my daughters may eventually encounter the same problem and I want to have them fully prepared to defend the truth.


Jim

 

One point I had never considered before but made by Elder Milburn Cockrell in his book 'Scriptural Church Organization' is that there have always been churches who were persecuted by the RC church. This is perhaps not conclusive evidence for the Baptist (though I accept it as very strong). Another recommended reading is Leonard Verduin's The Reformation and its Step-Children. This issue is discussed very good. Recommend this book to your teacher.

As a student studying for teacher certification, I am certain the teacher realizes the need for an open mind. At least in Kentucky this seems to be the greatest single most important characteristic of an educator.

Bro. Dallas

 

I won't quote the writings of any man but will use scripture which is the Word Of God... The one who baptised Jesus Christ was John The Baptist... Who immersed... This is where the baptist church came from... not John The Catholic who would have been a sprinkler!... That is the difference as Jesus straightway came up out of the water just as the scripture say he was immersed by a baptist!... Let your teacher argue with scripture and present the facts according to God... There was a reason he was called a baptist and God named him!... Brother Glen

 

If you don't mind doing some reading I'd check out the following texts:

Leon McBeth's Baptist Heritage

William Estep's The Anabaptist Story

These are plenty good and both deny the foolish Trail of Blood theory. Personally I'm an English Separatist origins guy seeing as I see John Smythe (pronounced Sm-eye-th) and Thomas Helwys coming out of the persecuted English Separatist church when they moved to Amsterdam in 1608 (Helwys returned to England in 1611 to establish the first baptist church ever.) It is out of this church that Baptists began to be established and have their work grow.

Also from these first Baptist Roger Williams was sent to the Massachuetts Bay Colony in 1632 where he resided until 1637. Then he moved to found the colony of Providence where religious liberty was promoted. Roger Williams started the first baptist church in America shortly hereafter in 1639. The links are better described in the two texts above. McBeth's text is thicker but is the standard by which all others are judged.

Hope that helps!

 

Thanks for your input, and this is not the thread for this discussion, but I would take issue with the history of Roger Williams. Where do you find the record he was 'sent' to the Mass. colony?

Does his history show him to have remained a Baptist? If not, then would you agree he perhaps was never a Baptist in heart at least?

John Clark I believe is the proper source for the Rhode Island brethren. I would like to see the source of his being 'sent'.

Other than that I enjoyed reading your post and understand fully why you stand in the position you have declared.

May God Bless
Bro. Dallas Eaton

 

"This has always been an interesting topic to me -- were the Baptists around pre-reformation? Anabaptists, sure, but not European Baptists -- Also the great leaders of the Anabaptists (similar to, but not the same as modern day Baptists) came from the Roman Catholic church, a few later came from the Lutheran or other Protestant churches.

Baptists in America are offshoots of the Puritans who came over from Britan.

quote: "Baptists in America and Britain find their origins in Protestant Puritanism, and their connection with the Anabaptists is only imaginary. Similarities there are, but the vast differences must be honestly admitted as well. Historical ties to the Anabaptists were continually disavowed by early Baptists, while at the same time they all claimed the closest of ties with the Protestant Reformation. Anabaptist, on the other hand, for the most part, came from Roman Catholic stock. It has also been shown that while few similarities exist between today's Baptists and some ancient religious sects, none of them were actually what today's Baptists are. They too came from out the established church of Rome, and were generally sacramentalists and sometimes even pagan."

and link:
http://www.biblicalstudies.com/bstudy/ecclesiology/baptism.htm

Why is it that some Baptists want to deny their roots? I WAS Baptist for 26 years and I never heard of such a thing from until recently."


OK that was why I popped over here tonight--I was in this discussion with a Baptist converted to Catholic (?) anyway, she wants to know why we deny our roots? I don't think there's anything Catholic (remotely even) about Baptists and I dont' have any Catholic roots to deny--when did the Catholic church come to be organized?

Thanks for hopefully adding some replies for me!

Malissa

 

I readily admit that the 'trail' is difficult to see. But I am confident that the presence of some who were from the beginnings of the Roman Catholic persecuted is strong evidence for the Baptist claim.

I realize each of these must be dealt with on a local or regional church by church basis to determine whether they would line up with what we believe today.

To answer the point these came out from the RC church I would say that at one time there was 'one' accord among these brethren as the churches in every local must certainly have come from the Jerusalem church. Unless you believe churches are spontaneously brought about.

As the church at Rome fell into apostasy, those refusing to move from scripture and establish the heresies of Rome certainly would have come out from them. But this would have occurred long before Luther.

Leonard Verduin is perhaps the best at making me to understand some of these things regarding this topic.

When Luther protested, when Calvin protested neither meant to form their own denomination, but to reform the church. When each acted there were groups already present who went to them until they learned these men had no desire to separate from all the errors of Rome.

The earliest difficulty seems to have come over baptism in regards to believer's only or infant baptism. This then means imho, the issue was also concerned with the invisible or universal church. Rome believes that all people in any geographic region are in ward to the church. As baptists believe (or better as I understand them to believe) only those baptized are wards of the church. This does not deny the commission of the church, but simply means the church is made up locally and of professing believers who are baptized.

Infant baptism is what made the error of thought to lead to the universal theory, imho. Along with this was the error of joining with the state, can't remember the date, but I am sure someone does (312 or 352???) at this time the Roman Emperor required all subjects of Rome to submit to Christian baptism. This removed the belief in believers' baptism and made a better way for the belief in infant baptism.

Just some thoughts. I haven't studied this point from history as much as most of the guys here, I have tried to remember that Christ promised to 'build' or add to his church and therefore these have always been present in the world, even if there were variations.

Bro. Dallas Eaton

 

Kayla,

I would have to retype it to send it to you, so I will simply do it here and you can cut and paste it.

Mark Osgatharp

Three Pre-Reformation Non-Catholic Denominations

Written by Scott Osgatharp and presented in the Senior English class at Wynne (Arkansas) High School in October of 2001.

Many people believe the Catholic Church is the oldest Christian church in the world today, and no other current day church (except Eastern Orthodox) is believed to have existed before the sixteenth century Protestant Reformation. Although these misconceptions are widely held, an exploration of this subject reveals at least three currently existing Christian groups originated before the Protestant Reformation. Two of these groups, the Anabpatists and Waldenses claim an origin prior to the Catholic Church. The other group is the Hussites, known today as the Moravians.

The Waldenses have a disputed origin. The Waldenses say when the apostle Paul was traveling to Spain he went to the valleys of Piedmont, and started their churches (Weber, page 1). These Evangelical churches of Piedmont (Waldenses)stopped associating with the Church of Rome (the church with which the Roman Catholics claim they originated) when it started to stray from the faith and corrupt itself. Morland states in his History of the Evangelical Churches of the Valleys of Piedmont, "But when as the Church of Rome began to corrupt itself, and would by no means be persuaded to retain the purity of that Apostolical Doctrine and Divine worship, then those of the valleys [Waldenses] began to separate themselves from them, and to come out from amongst them, that so they might not be partakers of their sins, nor receive of their plagues." There were several works written in and around 1120 that verify these statements. One of which was called Qual cofa fia Antichrist? which translates What thing is Antichrist? (Morland, page 9).

The Catholic Church, however, claims that the Waldenses' account of their origins cannot be believed because their records were thought to have been forged (Weber, page 1). Weber, however, does not give any substantial evidence of these tamperings nor any other reason why the Waldenses' histories cannot be credited. It appears that the Catholic Church makes these claims to preserve their own claims of antiquity.

The Catholic Church feels that the Waldenses were founded by a man named Peter Waldes who was a wealthy merchant from Lyons (Weber, page 1). At the feast of the Assumption in 1176 Waldes gave up all of his earthly possessions and took the vow of poverty. In doing this he stirred up the people of Lyons and many of them followed in his steps. Special groups were formed by these people of the "apostolic poverty." These people preached and brought many others into their group (Weber, page 2).

According to the Third General Lateran Council in 1179, these people's teachings were not doctrinally sound and were prohibited by the Council (Weber, page 2). However, they continued to preach despite the Catholic Church's prohibitions. They felt that they should obey God rather than man. Pope Lucius III gave a Bull of Excommunication at Vernon in 1184 against the followers of Waldes (Weber, page 2).

During the time of the Protestant Reformation the Waldenses became known as Anabaptists. Dr. Ypeij, Professor of Theology in Gronigen, and Reverend J.P. Dermout, chaplain to the King of the Netherlands, both Dutch Reformists, were commissioned by the king of the Netherlands in 1819 to study the claim of the Dutch Baptists (Anabaptists) to apostolic origin (Christian, page 95). In their book, Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Hervormde Kerk, they made the following statement:

"We have now seen that the Baptists who were formerly called Anabaptists, and in later times Mennonites, were the original Waldenses, and who have long in the history of the church received the honor of that origin. On this account the Baptists may be considered as the only Christian community which has stood since the days of the apostles, and as a Christian society which has preserved pure the doctrines of the gospel through all ages. The perfectly correct external and internal economy of the Baptist denomination tends to confirm the truth, disputed by the Romish Church, that the Reformation brought about in the sixteenth century was in the highest degree necessary, and at the same time goes to refute the erroneous notion of the Catholics that their denomination is the most ancient" (Christian, page 95).

Their findings not only support the idea that the Waldenses and Anabaptists are one and the same, but also supports the ideas that the Waldenses are not a splinter group from the Catholic Church and are older than they. Their findings also document that there are churches that exist today that existed before the Protestant Reformation. John Laurence Mosheim, a Lutheran historian, made a similar statement about the Anabaptists. He stated:

"It may be observed, in the first place, that the Mennonites are not entirely in an error when they boast of their descent from the Waldenses, Petrobrussians, and other ancient sects, who are usually considered as witnesses of the truth, in the times of general darkness and superstition. Before the rise of Luther and Calvin, there lay concealed, in almost all countries of Europe, particularly in Bohemia, Moravia, Switzerland, and Germany, many persons, who adhered tenaciously to the following doctrine, which the Waldenses, Wicklifites, and Hussites, had maintained, some in amore disguised and other in a more open and public manner [etc.]" (Mosheim, page 491).

The last of the three groups that has roots prior to the Protestant Reformation is the Hussites, now known as Moravians. The Catholic Church called them Hussites after Jan Hus, a prominent leader among them (Wilhelm, page 1). Hus, a Bohemian (Greonfeldt, page 446), who was the curate of Bethleham at Prague, defended the beliefs, in 1414, of Wickliff of England. Because of his actions he was put before the council of Constance. When he refused to admit he was in the wrong he was sentenced to be burnt alive. At Constance his sentence was served (Hussites, page 802).

The Hussites, much like the Waldenses and Anabaptists, do not deem themselves as a new church but rather the true original church. This is evident by the fact that they vew Hus to be a martyr of the old religion and not a new or reformed religion (Wilhelm, page 1). At the beginning of the Protestant Reformation it is estimated there were 400 hussite churches with a combined total membership of between 150,000 and 200,000 people (Murphy, page 1283). This proves that the Hussites were well established prior to the Protestant Reformation.

The Hussites had a reform movement in the fifteenth century. The present day Moravian Church came out of the Unitas Fratum which was a part of this movement (Gorenfeldt, page 446). This also is supporting evidence of the Hussites existing several years before the Protestant Reformation. It would not be likely for a church to have a reform if they hadn't existed for quite some time. Today there are more than 500,000 Moravians world wide, 60,000 of which are the North America.

The preceding documentation demonstrates that the Waldenses and Anabaptists not only existed before the Protestant Reformation but also existed before the Catholic Church. Furthermore, it confirms that the Hussites/Moravians were a flourshing group of churches before the Protestant Reformation and possibly before the Catholic Church. Therefore, it can be confidently asserted that the Catholic Church is neither the oldest church in the world, nor the only one existing before the Protestant Reformation.

Works Cited:

Christian, John; A History of the Baptists, Nashville, Tennessee, 1922.

Groenfeldt, John; "Moravian Church" Encyclopedia Americana, Danbury: Grolier Incorporated, 1998.

"Hussites" Encyclopedia Britanica, Edinburgh: Colin MacFarquhar, 1771.

Morland, Samuel; The History of the Evangelical Churches of the Valleys of Piedmont, London: Henery Hills, 1658.

Mosheim, John; Mosheim's Church History, Cincinnati: Applegate & Co., 1855. Original publication in 1755.

Murpthy, T.F.; Religious Bodies: 1936 Summary and Detailed Tables. Volume 2, Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1941.

Weber, N.A., "Anabaptists" in Catholic Encyclopedia, Robert Appleton Company, 1907, www.newadvent.org/cathen/.9/26/01.

Weber, N.A., "Waldenses" in Catholic Encyclopedia, Robert Appleton Company, 1907, www.newadvent.org/cathen/.9/25/01.

Wilhelm, J., "Hussites" in Catholic Encyclopedia, Robert Appleton Company, 1907, www.newadvent.org/cathen/.9/26/01.

 

For anyone interested in the facts of Baptist history, you can read John T. Christian's "History of the Baptists" online. Unlike Vedder, Torbet, and McBeth, Christian was untainted with modernism and therefore a far more credible witness than they. His aquaintance with the primary sources is unsurpassed.

Don't take the word of biased modernistic historians based on secondary sources; read and find out the facts for yourselves. http://www.pbministries.org/History/John%20T.%20Christian/vol1/history_of_the_baptist_vol1.htm

Mark Osgatharp