Afraid of the Bible
True evangelical faith cannot lie dormant. It clothes the naked, it feeds the hungry, it comforts the sorrowful, it shelters the destitute, it serves those that harm it, it binds up that which is wounded, it has become all things to all people.
Menno Simons, Why I Do Not Cease Teaching and Writing
It has been said that there are three great persecutions of the church: persecution waged by the first-century religious leaders, then persecution by the Romans, and finally—and sadly—persecution by the church on the church. Menno Simons lived in this third wave of persecution. Although his name may not be familiar to most, he is well-known to hundreds of thousands of Mennonites around the world.
Menno Simons was born in 1496 in Witmarsum, Friesland, in the Netherlands. Little is known about his childhood, but his early days were spent as a peasant in a war-torn land. Somehow he found his way into the Roman Catholic Church, where he was educated and trained as a priest and spiritual advisor.
We wouldn’t think of hiring a plumber who hasn’t studied plumbing, or go to a doctor who has never read a medical text, but Menno Simons served as a priest without ever opening the Bible. “I feared if I should read them they would mislead me,” he wrote.1
Imagine that. A priest who feared being misled by the Scriptures. The two priests who served with him in the town of Pingjum had only read parts of the Bible. In his later writings Simons admitted to a love for gambling, drinking, and “diversions as, alas, is the fashion and usage of such useless people.” In other words, he was a spiritual man in name only.
“I spoke much concerning the word of the Lord, without spirituality or love, as all hypocrites do, and by this means I [made] disciples of my own kind, vain boasters and frivolous babblers, who, alas, like myself did not take these matters seriously.”2
A Puzzled Priest
How does such a man become a shaper of the church? It started when Simons observed a break between what he had been taught about the Eucharist and what he experienced during Mass. The word Eucharist refers to the church ordinance that recalls the body and blood of Christ. Wine (or grape juice) and bread are shared with worshipers as Jesus shared with his disciples in the upper room shortly before his betrayal and crucifixion. Other church groups call it communion or the Lord’s Supper. The church has practiced it since the first century in a belief that to do so follows the command of Christ (Luke 22:19–20). As has been mentioned, the Roman Catholic Church taught the doctrine of transubstantiation, a belief that the wine literally turns into the blood of Christ and the bread literally turns into his flesh. Lutherans adopted consubstantiation, which teaches that the blood and flesh of Jesus mingle with the wine and the bread.
As a priest, it fell to Simons to distribute the elements of the Eucharist to his parishioners, but as he did, questions arose. The elements, as far as Simons could tell, never changed. Bread remained bread; wine remained wine. This created for him a spiritual crisis. He first assumed the devil was misleading him. He prayed for God’s intervention, but he could not shake the questions swirling in his mind. To settle himself, he turned to the Bible he had previously ignored, studying the New Testament to look for biblical evidence that confirmed the sacramental practice of the Eucharist.
“Finally, I got the idea to examine the New Testament diligently. I had not gone very far when I discovered that we were deceived, and my conscience, troubled on account of the aforementioned bread, was quickly relieved.”3 Simons felt led astray by the church. He could find no biblical evidence for transubstantiation.
Simons, who had before avoided reading the Bible, became one of its greatest spokesmen. His newfound love of the Bible and its teachings produced in him a passion for preaching and made him a popular teacher. But despite this newfound love, and in spite of all outward appearances, Menno Simons still felt spiritually empty. Then news of a tragic event sent him searching the Scriptures again.
Among the Dutch there was a growing spiritual movement, the Anabaptists, who were drawing the attention and ire of the Roman Catholic Church and some Protestant groups. The term “anabaptist” comes from two Greek words; ana meaning “again” or “re-” and baptizo, referring to immersion. Anabaptists taught “believers baptism,” the idea that baptism followed conversion. This meant that they rejected infant baptism, which was part of Catholic teaching and the prominent baptism practice of the day. Remarkably, this view of rebaptism was considered punishable by death, with executions being carried out by local authorities. One such execution took the life of an Anabaptist in Leeuwarden. He was beheaded, and he wasn’t the only Anabaptist to die for being rebaptized.
News of the execution led Simons to reconsider the practice of rebaptism. “It sounded very strange to me to hear of a second baptism. I examined the Scriptures diligently and pondered them earnestly but could find no report of infant baptism.”4
Simons did not have a natural proclivity or zeal for any cause. It troubled him to think of people being willing to die for their beliefs. He had preached to secure his comfortable lifestyle, but to hear that Anabaptists were willing to face death by beheading in order to practice biblical faithfulness brought him intense spiritual conviction.
“My soul was troubled and I reflected upon the outcome, that if I should gain the whole world and live 1000 years, and at last have to endure the wrath of God, what would I have gained?”5
The persecution of Anabaptists grew. Over three hundred Anabaptists were executed at Old Cloister at Bolsward. Simons’ brother Peter was one of those executed. The knowledge of this sent the priest into a spiritual depression. They had given everything; he had given so little.
Pondering these things, my conscience tormented me so that I could no longer endure it. My heart trembled within me. I prayed to God with sighs and tears that He would give to me, a sorrowing sinner, the gift of His grace, create within me a clean heart, and graciously through the merits of the crimson blood of Christ forgive my unclean walk and I might preach His exalted and adorable name and holy Word in purity.
Then I, without constraint, of a sudden, renounced all my worldly reputation, name and fame, my unchristian abominations, my masses, infant baptism, and my easy life, and I willingly submitted to distress and poverty under the heavy cross of Christ. In my weakness I feared God; I sought out the pious and though they were few in number I found some who were zealous and maintained the truth.6
For the better part of a year he used his Catholic pulpit to preach the gospel, which for Simons meant repentance, the narrow path, and the power of Scripture to change lives. It was not enough for him. The differences he saw between the Roman Catholic dogma he had been taught and what he was learning from Bible study became too pronounced. After twelve years as a priest, Menno Simons turned his back on Rome and joined the Anabaptists, who gladly received him.
As if the troubles of the Anabaptists in defending rebaptism were not enough, a fanatical, end-times group called the Munsterites arose. Led by Jan Matthijs, this spin-off group of Anabaptists were fanatical about bringing in the one-thousand-year reign of Christ. Catholics and Lutherans alike feared the radicals, and armed men were sent against them by the area bishop. The Munsterites fought back, something peace-loving Anabaptists were not expected to do. In 1534, the more extreme Munsterites took control of the town and, claiming divine revelation, ruled with a heavy hand. Jan of Leiden seized power and ruled like a tyrant, instituting polygamy. But in June of 1535, the bishop’s army prevailed against them.
The damage, however, had been done. The term Anabaptist no longer stood for peaceful people who longed to follow the New Testament pattern. The label came to represent something abhorrent. Menno Simons’ ministry now included repudiating violence and encouraging the peaceful Anabaptists to persevere despite having to endure this second wave of persecution brought about by the Munsterites. The priest who had once lived a comfortable life found himself and his family—he had married a woman named Gertrude and had at least three children—constantly on the run. As Simons traveled, he ministered to Anabaptists who were also on the move. Offers of pardon or monetary reward were made for information leading to his whereabouts. No one gave him up. On one of his trips to Friesland, he stayed in the home of Tjard Reynders. In January 1539, Reynders was arrested, tortured, and executed. All for having given Menno Simons and his family a place to sleep for the night.
Life on the Run
Charles V, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, distributed an edict against Simons and offered gold to anyone who turned the preacher in. It became illegal to provide food and shelter to him. The earthly quality of his life deteriorated while his spiritual life blossomed. In his words, “For this I, my poor, feeble wife and children have for eighteen years endured extreme anxiety, oppression, affliction, misery and persecution, and at the peril of my life, have been compelled everywhere to live in fear and seclusion.”7
Today, just under one million people call themselves Mennonites or are affiliated with groups that can trace their lineage back to the Dutch Anabaptists and Anabaptist groups. The emphasis on biblical authority and the need for a pattern of worship like that of the New Testament church has benefited many Protestant groups. The contribution of Menno Simons and those like him have endured for centuries. For them, biblical faith was not a casual or part-time thing, it was the very fabric of their lives. Their love for God made them willing to endure scorn, threats, arrest, torture, and death.
Menno Simons shaped the church by making the church relevant, important, and personal. He elevated the Bible to the highest level in a time when not even priests read the Book. It was the Bible that took Simons from comfortable priest to fugitive for the faith.
Simons wrote three books: Christian Baptism (1539), Foundation of Christian Doctrine (1540), and The True Christian Faith (1541), but his greatest work was written on the hearts of those to whom he ministered.
Twenty-five years after he left the priesthood, Simons died. It was January 31, 1561. Those who sought to arrest him never succeeded. Simons died at his home and was buried in his garden.