Two months ago, a gross oversight occurred. A day of historical importance came and went unnoticed.
Thousands of people were talking about the history making events of January 20, 2025, but hardly anyone even bothered with the profound events that occurred on that day, 500 years before, January 21, 1525.
On that bleak, midwinter day, in the evening, a small group met together, in a small village, just outside the city of Zürich, Switzerland. Earlier in the day, in Zürich, the leading men of this group had stood before the Zürich city council, where they had disputed with their former teacher, Ulrich Zwingli, about the pace in which he was carrying forward reform, and whether infant baptism was legitimate or not. At the end of the disputation, the council had ruled that Zwingli was in the right, and that all unbaptized infants were to receive baptism within 8 days, or their parents were to be banished from Zürich.
It was following these events that this little group came together to discuss what they were to do. The three principal leaders of this group were previously some of Zwingli’s finest students, Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz, and George Blaurock.
As they were discussing what their response to the ruling of the council should be, all of a sudden, Blaurock rose to his feet, and solemnly asked Grebel to baptize him. Such a request was no simple decision. If an adult baptism was performed, it would essentially be the crossing of the Rubicon, because, at this point in the reformation, the church was still so intertwined with the state that baptism was not only your path to admission into membership in the church, but also to citizenship in the state. Rebaptism, therefore, could be equated to treason.
But this was not the deciding factor in the minds of these men. The deciding factor was the Word of God, and as the scripture clearly states that one must believe before being baptized, it was only moments before Blaurock was kneeling on the floor, before Grebel, and water was poured over his head. Blaurock then, in turn, did the same for all those present. It was the beginning of the Anabaptist movement - The Radical Reformation.
Yet, as is signified by the almost complete silence on the anniversary of this bold move for truth, most Adventists know little to nothing about the Anabaptists and their contribution to the reformation. Many are familiar with the modern descendants of these radical reformers, in people such as the Amish, Mennonites, Old German Baptist Brethren, Church of the Brethren, Hutterites and others, but if asked about the origins of these groups, they could not give an answer.
This, I believe, is tragic, particularly because many things we, as Seventh-day Adventists, hold to be vital truths, such as Believer’s Baptism, The Separation of Church and State, Liberty of Conscience, The Priesthood of all Believers, and others were first championed by these early Anabaptist reformers. In fact, when we compare the light we have been given, to the beliefs of many of the groups of the reformation era, I believe some of the Anabaptists are closer to us than many of the Magisterial Reformers (those reformers who relied on the protection of the state to move forward with their reform).
Though not all Anabaptists agreed on everything, there were some groups that championed doctrines that we consider very Adventist today. Anabaptist leaders Andreas Fischer and Oswald Glaidt found all ten commandments of the Decalogue to be still binding, including the Sabbath commandment, and therefore were staunch Sabbath keepers. Their strain of Anabaptism gained a lot of traction in Moravia and Silesia, and grew to the point that Sunday keeping Anabaptists felt the need to refute them. Eventually, the spread of their teaching caused even Martin Luther to feel the issue needed to be addressed.
Another Anabaptist with whom Glaidt associated, and was deeply influenced by, was Hans Hut, who was so influential among the Anabaptists, that at one point he was labeled as their leader on a poster that could be considered the 16th century version of a wanted poster. Hut was a strong believer in the literal, soon coming of Christ in the clouds, to establish, not a physical, but a spiritual kingdom. Hut fully expected to see Christ come in the year 1528, but unlike our early Adventist pioneers he did not suffer disappointment when Christ did not return when he expected, for he had been arrested the previous year after participating in what became known as the “Martyrs’ Synod” of Anabaptists, and though his enemies wished to burn him at the stake, the Lord saved him from this when he suffocated from smoke from a fire, set when a candle he was using to read with, tipped over and caught his straw mattress in his cell. Enraged that they had been deprived of their prey, his accusers tried his dead body and burned it at the stake anyway.
There were also Anabaptists who subscribed to the view of the state of the dead that we, as Adventists, do, and also believed in annihilationism rather than an eternally burning hell. Of course there are also other beliefs that we have in common with the 16th century Anabaptists, but I believe I have made my point in this regard. If you would like to know more details on the doctrines that some of the early Anabaptists held, that are similar to our beliefs, I would highly recommend writing to receive The Anabaptist Review, written and sent out by my friend Allen Barnes, of Plain People Ministries.
But besides all this, the Anabaptist Movement produced just as many great Men of faith as the Magisterial Reformation. After their baptisms, Manz, Grebel, and Blaurock were joined by men such as Micheal Sattler, Hans Hut and many others. But the price they paid for the truth they sought was not cheap. Just under two years after his rebaptism in 1525, on January 5th, 1527; Felix Manz was given his “third baptism”, as it was mockingly called, when the Zürich city council condemned him to be drowned. It was the first time that protestants had condemned a fellow protestant.
Following this, one Anabaptist leader after another fell, both by the sword of the Catholic and the sword of the Protestant, till the movement was left as sheep without shepherds. Then followed several years when fanatical leaders took the place of the men of God who had been slaughtered. Ultimately this lead to the Münster Rebellion in which a group of Anabaptists threw one of their foundational beliefs, nonresistance, to the wayside and overthrew the city government of Münster and established what they called, “New Jerusalem”. Only a few short months later, the Catholic authorities returned with an army and began slaughtering the insurgents.
This caused the rise of a new shepherd, Menno Simons, a former priest, who brought the movement back to its original faith, and made enough of an impact on the reformation as a whole, that he was included in chapter 13 of The Great Controversy, The Netherlands and Scandinavia. His leadership had brought the movement back together, and eventually, as a result, the followers of his branch of Anabaptism, came to be known as Mennists, and later, Mennonites.
Eventually, and unfortunately, the Anabaptists lost sight of their beginnings, and the reason they lived separate from the world, and, as disagreements arose, began to splinter. In the 17th century, a split of the Swiss Mennonites gave rise to the Amish, and since then the splintering has only continued.
But though these people lost sight of their original mission, it does not negate the fact that the movement was led of God and that it, in many ways paved the way for the Seventh-day Adventist Church to rise three hundred years later.
I hope that through this short history, you have learned more about the forgotten reformation, The Radical Reformation. And I hope you can appreciate the part it played in God’s plan to restore truth to His people and recognize just how much we have in common with these radicals.
So, in remembrance of the brave stand taken by Felix Manz, Conrad Grebel, and George Blaurock; on that day, January 21, 1525, I say:
Here’s to 500 years of Radical Reformation, and may it continue until Christ come to claim his own!
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Note:
To receive The Anabaptist Review, write to:
Plain People Ministries P.O. Box 278
Denton, NC 27239
When you write, mention that you are an Adventist, as Brother Barnes has a separate mailing list for Adventists, and mention that that Micah Zummach recommended it to you.
