How the Reformers denied Christ and left their salvation in question.

[1689dave]

How the Reformers denied Christ and left their salvation in question.

Matthew calls the Sermon on the Mount the doctrine of Christ (Matthew 7:28).
And John says any who do not have the doctrine of Christ do not have God (2 John 9–11). Nor are we to bid them a good day, or let them into our house.
Contrary to the Sermon on the Mount, the Reformers and the Catholics killed thousands who did not for sake of conscience agree with them.

In Catholic countries the Anabaptists, as a rule, were executed by burning at the stake; in Lutheran and Zwinglian states, Anabaptists were generally executed by beheading or drowning.

Thousands sealed their faith with their blood. When all efforts to halt the movement proved vain, the authorities resorted to desperate measures. Armed executioners and mounted soldiers were sent in companies through the land to hunt down the Anabaptists and kill them on the spot without trial or sentence. The old method of pronouncing sentence on each individual dissenter proved inadequate to exterminate this faith.

In the first week of Lent, 1528, King Ferdinand of Austria* commissioned a company of executioners to root out the Anabaptist faith in his lands. Those who were overtaken in the highways of fields were killed with the sword, others were dragged out of their houses and hanged on the door posts. Most of them had gone into hiding in the woods and mountains. In a forest near Lengbach seventeen were put to death.

*The Protestant Reformation spread from northern Germany to Austria. By the Council of Trent in 1545, almost half of the Austrian population had converted to Lutheranism, while a much smaller minority also endorsed Calvinism. From the Mennonites in Europe by John Horsch Chapter 34

Another historian writes:
John Calvin in Geneva, whose consistory was nothing more than a bold-faced inquisition). They all become persecutors like Rome before them!" [9]

The Anabaptists protested against this anti- Christian activity on the pan of the famous reformers, but it availed nothing. Menno Simons writes of this bloody cruelty in which thousands of Anabaptists were put to death by the Protestant State-churches:

The Protestants rejected a disciplined church of voluntary disciples, and defended a mass- church of baptized infants. Calvin did operate a limited church discipline, but through the power of stocks, whippings, mutilations, and the gallows for transgressions (such as gambling, swearing, etc.). From: Pfister, Oscar. Christianity and Fear



Another writes: “Several of the Anabaptists were also put to death, by the Lutherans, for their obstinacy in propagating their errors.

John Calvin, another of the reformers, to whom the Christian world is, on many accounts, much indebted, was, however, well known to be, in principle and practice, a persecutor. So entirely was he in favour of persecuting measures, that he wrote a treatise in defence of them, maintaining the lawfulness of putting heretics to death; and he reduced these rigid theories to practice, in his conduct towards Castellio, Jerome Bolsce, and Servetus, whose fates are generally known. At the council of Geneva, 1632, Nicholas Anlhoinc was condemned to be first hanged and then burned for opposing the doctrine of the Trinity; and at Basil and Zurich, since the Reformation, heresy was a crime punishable with death, as the fate of David George and Felix abundantly prove.

If we pass over into Holland, we shall also find that the reformers there, were, mostly, in the principles and measures of persecution, which gave the Catholics great advantage against them. In the very infancy of the reformation, the Lutherans and Calvinists condemned one another for their supposed heterodoxy, and looked upon compliance and mutual toleration as things intolerable. But the most outrageous quarrel was that between the Calvinists and Arminians. One Jacobus Arminius was the author of this controversy, who, disputing in his torn, at Leyden, about the doctrine of predestination, advanced many things different from Calvin's opinion, and was, accordingly, a few months after, warmly opposed by Gomarus, his colleague, who held, that it was appointed by an eternal decree of God, who, amongst mankind, should be saved, and who should be damned. The moment the two parties had thus got a dogma to dispute upon, the controversy became irreconcilable, and was conducted with the most outrageous violence. The ministers of the predestination party would enter into no treaty; the Remonstrants were the objects of their furious zeal, whom they denominated, mamelukes, devils and plagues; animating the magistrates to destroy them: and when the time of the new elections drew near, they prayed to God for such men as would be zealous, even to blood, though it were to cost the whole trade of their cities. At length, n synod being assembled, acted in the usual manner; they laid down the principles of faith with confidence, condemned the doctrine of the Remonstrants; deprived their antagonists of all their offices; and concluded by humbly beseeching God and their high mightiness’s, to put their decrees into execution, and to ratify the doctrine they had expressed. The states obliged them in this Christian and charitable request, for as soon as the synod was concluded, Barnwelt, a friend of the Remonstrants and their opinions, was beheaded, and Grotius condemned to perpetual imprisonment; and because the dissenting ministers would not promise wholly, and always to abstain from the exercise of their religious functions…. “J. Stockdale, the History of the Inquisitions

So? If the Reformers did not obey Christ, and John says you do not know God apart from that, I would not gamble they were believers in the true sense. But probably used Augustine in a political struggle with the Catholics who left Augustine long ago.

[Szdfan]

I asked ChatGTP to summarize the above post:

The text describes instances where the Reformers, including figures like John Calvin, persecuted and executed those who disagreed with their religious doctrines, particularly the Anabaptists. This contradicts the teachings of Christ, as highlighted in the Sermon on the Mount. The author questions the authenticity of the Reformers' faith and suggests that they may have used Augustine's ideas for political purposes in their conflict with the Catholic Church. Ultimately, the author raises doubts about the Reformers' adherence to Christ and the validity of their salvation.

Is this accurate?

[1689dave]

It's as accurate as my resources, but basically yes.

[Sudsy]

In the 2 John 9-11 text what doctrine of Christ was this speaking about ?

"For many deceivers have gone out into the world, the ones not confessing Jesus Christ having come in the flesh. This one is the deceiver and the anti-Christ. Watch yourselves, so that you do not lose what we have accomplished but instead receive a full reward.”

I believe this was the doctrine being referred to in 2 John 9-11 and the Reformers, as far as I know, did not deny Jesus came in the flesh whereas others have.