1 of 4 A General History

Prior to 1500 we find very few, if any, toher organized denominations except the Roma Catholic Faith, and at that time, the Catholics had ruled their church by Government of State control। In other words if one had violated or disobeyed their church discipline, they were under obligation to be prosecuted by State authorities.

The Bible at that time had been held as a secret book and was only printed in the Latin language, which many people could not understand or even read। The Pope and priests were looked upon as being the only ones necessary to study the Bible, with the Pope being considered the only one to know right from wrong. In that way they had kept their church united.

However, we find in "Martyr's Mirror", pages 363 to 366 (English edition), in about the year 1540, that a few churches in Greece and Turkey had not been related to the Roman Catholic Church in any way, but had still held the attitude of Faith as did the Apostles. The Thessalonica Church in Greece, who derived their name from Hans Schwitzer, had well agreed upon the Articles of Faith in every respect. It is stated that the Church of God at Thessalonica had remained unchanged in Faith from the time of the Apostles, and at that time had still preserved in good condition the letters which the Apostle Paul had written to them with his own hand.

In the early part of the sixteenth century, a number of Catholic priests had found by searching the Scripture that they had drifted far from the old Apostolic Church and had wished to reinstate the Church under the form of the apostles. But because they feared being expelled from office, as they had received large sums of money, for some time, they kept on holding church services as before even though it had been against their conscience. Finally they decided to break the news no matter what the consequences may be.

Martin Luther, Conrad Grebel, Ulrich Zwingli, Menno Simons and others in different localities of the European countries, all were being educated to priesthood in the highest degree.

On October 13, 1516, Luther preached from the pulpit, strong and powerfully, against the Catholic customs. He said, "I seek salvation of souls and not the contents of purse." He once said, "I felt the pains of hell in my soul, had it lasted an hour or half or ten minutes it would have turned my bones to ashes." His preaching was like a match touching gun powder, as it aroused the people considerably.

Luther, being well educated in Greek, German, Latin, and Hebrew languages, had some thesis of scripture literature printed and had them distributed among the people of different nationalities. It was soon known of in most of the civilized countries of Europe.

The Pope and others drew up documents against Luther leading to his excommunication and as an outlaw. In 1520 he was put in prison which gave him the privilege to translate the Bible from Latin to German.

About ten years later, Menno Simons followed Luther in almost the same manner.

He once said, "I thought I was leading a clean and pious life but found that my body was full of a dead man's bones."

Menno was baptized and ordained to the ministry by Obbie Philips. The congregation at that time was called Obbinites in honor of Philips. Later it was called Mennonites in honor of Menno Simons.

He died a natural death January 31, 1561, twenty-five years after the denunciation of Catholicism.

This period is called the Reformation or the beginning of the Protestant churches.