Bible connection

When the high priest and his associates arrived, they called together the Sanhedrin—the full assembly of the elders of Israel—and sent to the jail for the apostles. But on arriving at the jail, the officers did not find them there. So they went back and reported, “We found the jail securely locked, with the guards standing at the doors; but when we opened them, we found no one inside.” On hearing this report, the captain of the temple guard and the chief priests were at a loss, wondering what this might lead to.

Then someone came and said, “Look! The men you put in jail are standing in the temple courts teaching the people.” At that, the captain went with his officers and brought the apostles. They did not use force, because they feared that the people would stone them.

The apostles were brought in and made to appear before the Sanhedrin to be questioned by the high priest. “We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name,” he said. “Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man’s blood.”

Peter and the other apostles replied: “We must obey God rather than human beings!  — Acts 5:22-29

All about Conrad Grebel (1498–1526)

Conrad Grebel acted on his convictions with his twentysomething buddies (and quite a few older relatives) and catalyzed the Swiss Brethren, an offshoot of the Radical Reformation, later tagged the Anabaptists.

Grebel was born in Grüningen to Jakob and Dorothea Grebel. The family moved to Zurich when he was around fifteen years old.

Grebel spent six years in three universities but never earned a degree. In Paris he lived a wild life. When his father cut off his funds, he returned to Zurich.

In 1521, he met with a group led by Ulrich Zwingli, leader of the Reformation in Switzerland. The two studied Greek, Hebrew and the Latin Bible together.

His life changed in 1522 when he married a woman below his social class his family  found inappropriate. He later experienced a Christian conversion and underwent a dramatic lifestyle change, becoming an ardent supporter of Zwingli and his church reforms.

The next year differences between Grebel and Zwingli arose. Both men wanted the Catholic Mass to be abolished but when Zurich city councilmen did not favor it, Zwingli relented. Grebel believed the councilmen had no authority over the church and also didn’t think the church had authority over the state.

What he really believed in was the authority of the Bible. The principle that galvanized the new movement was adult baptism. The Bible did not mention infant baptism. But the church and state both used it — the fromer to control members and the latter to identify citizens. Grebel and his group believed only adults should be baptized on the basis of their profession of faith. On January 17, 1525, Zwingli called for a public debate on the issue. Felix Manz and George Blaurock joined Grebel on the side of believers’ baptism.

City council members and Zwingli disagreed and ordered Grebel’s group to disband and all unbaptized infants to be baptized. Grebel’s daughter was an infant, but he refused her baptism.

Soon Grebel met with the exiled radicals and baptized Blaurock. Then Blaurock baptized Grebel, Manz and others present. Grebel traveled to St. Gall and preached the gospel of repentance and baptism, and more than 500 people responded to his call. This was the beginning of a significant radical outbreak that was soon suppressed.

In October 1525, Grebel was arrested. In prison he wrote a defense of adult baptism; what we know of it is from quotes in a Zwingli pamphlet from 1527. He escaped in March 1526 to continue preaching. A few months later he died of the plague at the age of 28.

His closest friends were martyrs — Manz was drowned in 1527, and Blaurock was burned at the stake in 1529.

Although his ministry was less than four years and his time as an Anabaptist only a year-and-a-half, Grebel’s contributions made him known as “The Father of Anabaptists.”

Quotes

Seek earnestly to preach only God’s word unflinchingly, to establish and defend only divine practices, to esteem as good and right only what can be found in definite clear Scripture, and to reject, hate, and curse all the schemes, words, practices, and opinions of all men, even your own. –– Letter to Thomas Munzter

Moreover, the gospel and its adherents are not to be protected by the sword, nor [should] they [protect] themselves, which as we have heard through our brother is what you believe and maintain. True believing Christians are sheep among wolves, sheep for the slaughter. They must be baptized in anguish and tribulation, persecution, suffering, and death, tried in fire, and must reach the fatherland of eternal rest not by slaying the physical but the spiritual. They use neither worldly sword nor war, since killing has ceased with them entirely, unless indeed we are still under the old law, and even there (as far as we can know) war was only a plague after they had once conquered the Promised Land. No more of this. — Also Letter to Thomas Muntzer

More

“The Face of Conrad Grebel” from the university that bears his name in Waterloo, Ontario [link]

Anabaptist Encyclopedia entry [link]

The story of the first baptisms from Plain Values. 

The Bruderhof have a nice history series:

What do we do with this?

If you are a twentysomething, or newly married with young children, take heart! People have done important things in your exact situation. You might also celebrate the  college students who have disrupted the U.S. response to the Gaza incursion by Israel.

The powers-that-be quickly put the kabosh on radical reform. They Catholic Church doesn’t allow any reform and will begin hunting down people who don’t toe the line, soon. But the more liberal Swiss canton leaders and rulers of the smaller states in Germany also have no taste for giving away they power to the people to make their own decisions, or even to read the Bible for themselves. This is the kind of discouragement your radical readers have expereinced first hand. What are you willing to suffer for Jesus and the truth of the Gospel?