Ephraim Renno gives a historical overview of Jacob Ammon and the early roots of the Amish movement, drawing heavily from Grounded Upon God’s Word. He describes the troubled setting of seventeenth-century Europe, the growth of Anabaptism in the Bernese Oberland, persecution from the Reformed state church, and the zeal of many first-generation converts. Rather than presenting Jacob Ammon as merely a harsh schismatic, Ephraim argues that the Amish division arose from real concerns about compromise, church discipline, and lukewarmness, while also acknowledging that Jacob and the Oberlander ministers made serious mistakes in how they handled the conflict.
Key Points:
– Jacob Ammon was born in 1644 in Erlenbach, grew up in the Reformed Church, and later became an Anabaptist at great personal cost.
– The Amish beginnings were not simply a clean split from Mennonites; many modern Amish family names trace to a wave of converts from the Reformed Church in Canton Bern.
– The Anabaptists of Jacob’s time faced confiscation, banishment, imprisonment, loss of children, and severe fines, yet many still chose the narrow way.
– Ephraim explains that compromise was entering some Anabaptist circles through state-church attendance, infant baptism for citizenship, lying under pressure, and loosened church discipline.
– The conflict between Jacob Ammon and Hans Reist centered on discipline, social shunning, and whether “true-hearted” sympathizers could be consoled as saved without baptism and commitment to the persecuted brotherhood.
– Ephraim concludes that Jacob’s failures added fuel to the fire, but the deeper issue was a clash between zeal and lukewarmness, church discipline and permissiveness.
Scripture References: 1 Corinthians 5:9–11; Jesus’ call to deny self and forsake family, lands, and possessions for Him; Hebrews’ great cloud of witnesses; striving to enter the narrow gate
Guide me, O the great Jehovah, pilgrim through this barren land. Well, good morning and welcome to Hope For Wondering Amish. We’re so glad you’re with us here this morning. This morning we have Ephraim Renno on. Ephraim Renno is one of the admin of Hope For Wondering Amish. And Brother Ephraim actually did the four first talks for Hope For Wondering Amish.
It’s been over four years ago. Sorry, not four years ago. It’s been a little over two years ago. So we appreciate everybody that contributed to Hope For Wondering Amish in the last two plus years. It’s been a blessing doing this and we look forward to what God may have for the future for Hope For Wondering Amish. And we hope that this morning can be a blessing also. Brother Ephraim plans to share some on Amish history and that’s something he’s talked about for quite a while.
We look forward to hearing what he has to share this morning. So are you ready, Brother Ephraim? Yeah, I’m ready. Whenever you’re going to say a word of prayer yet for us. Yes, I’ll have a prayer for you and then the time will be yours. Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this beautiful morning that you have given us, Lord. And you’re so good, Father. We thank you for life and life more abundantly. And we just pray that you would be with Brother Ephraim this morning as he shares. We pray for your peace and your grace upon him.
Amish, Lord, as he shares this morning that somehow it could be a blessing to many and that your name could be lifted up as we see how you’ve worked in people’s lives in the past. And Lord, I pray that we could learn from this lesson here this morning. We pray your blessing upon the people in the audience and we pray that this meeting could be a blessing. In the precious name of Jesus, amen. Sorry, can I say one more thing? I also want to say that like always at the end,
we have a time for questions and answers. So if you have anything you’d like to ask, Ephraim, or share this morning, we’d be very, very glad to hear from you. All right, the time is yours, brother. All right, well, greetings, everyone. Welcome to whoever’s on here and whoever might listen to this later. This is going to be largely a history lesson. I enjoy history increasingly as time goes on, church history and all that. There’s so many lessons to be learned from history.
We want to make a wax nose where we can bend it this way or that way and make things look the way we want it to look. And we have to be careful with that. This morning, my desire is to take an honest look at a portion of history and hope that we can learn lessons from both the good and the bad and that we can hopefully not be guilty of biases that keep us from learning what we should learn. So I’m going to be sharing my screen here.
I hope that all works out all right. I’m on my phone here. I haven’t quite mastered the computer thing yet. So let me see if I can share my screen. That’s largely for myself just to have my notes in front of me. And then you can see them as well as we go. Much of what I’m sharing this morning is taken from this book, Grounded Upon God’s Word, The Life and Labors of Jacob Ammon by Andrew St. Marie and Mike Atnip. I feel like it’s an excellent work and definitely recommend it.
Maybe after this morning you’ll be motivated to get the book yourself and read it. And there’s going to be so much more than what I can share in a brief time this morning. Amish beginnings. Who was Jacob Ammon? The 17th century, the 1600s in Europe was riddled with trouble. I’m trying to give a little bit of a picture of what the European culture was like in Jacob Ammon’s time. The 1600s were just full of wars.
Poles and the Swedes from 1600 to 1629. The English and the French, 1627 to 1629. British, Irish, and the Scots from 1639 to 1653. The Portuguese and Spanish from 1640 to 1668. The Poles and the Russians from 1654 to 1667. Swedes and Poles, 1655 to 1660. The French and the Dutch, 1672 to 1678.
Many other countries, 1688 to 1697. And then the big one, the 30 years war from 1618 to 1648. As you can see, there were the 16th century or the 1600s rather was just full of wars. And besides the wars, there was the plague or the Black Death that would come through every so often and sometimes wipe out as many as one third of the population.
1612, the Canton of Bern lost one third of its population to the plague. And much of the history that we are talking about this morning happened in Bern. Unbeknownst to the people at the time, rats were carriers of this dreaded disease. And right here is a map in the bottom center. You see Bern and Oberland just below that.
It was right there. Oberland means highlands. It was up in the foothills of the Alps. Emmental was a valley. Switzerland was largely spared from armed conflicts through the wars mentioned previously. But to the north in Alsace and the Palatinate, there was extreme devastation. In large areas, buildings were burned and fields were growing up in brush.
Its goods was high. Switzerland spent large amounts in fortification against invasion. After the wars, demands for goods dropped and taxes were climbing. In response to the struggling economy, Bern issued copper coins which had the same value originally as silver coins. The rich tended to hoard the silver coins, while the poor generally traded with copper. Then in December of 1652,
the Canton of Bern devalued the copper coins by 50% with three days’ notice to exchange them for silver or gold before the drop, which gave the urban people enough time, but the rural peasants were forced to take the loss. Enough was enough. The angry peasants rose in rebellion and attacked the city with pitchforks and clubs. Those in the cities had better weapons and quickly overcame the revolution and executed its leaders. There is an example of
some weapons that would have been used by the Bernese peasants. Clubs and whips and whatever they could lay their hands on. And here’s a leader that was part of the rebellion. This conflict played itself out in the rural areas between Bern and Zurich, with the Emmental, where many Anabaptists lived, being right in the middle of the action. This conflict brings to light how the common rural peasants often had no
qualms with the Anabaptists who lived among them. They had more gripes against the cantonal government leaders who lived luxurious lives, all the while spitting out decrees and taxations for the people who did all the hard work. It is no wonder that some of the Anabaptist neighbors took their side when Canton officials made these rules against the Anabaptists and became hard on them. The surrounding people often were sympathetic.
In those sympathizers, we will see later how that sometimes played into life there. Tension was high between the ruling elite and the peasant population. The Anabaptists were a peace-loving people, highly regarded by their poor neighbors. When the rulers persecuted the Anabaptists, the peasants would often sympathize with them.
If a man could live off of natural beauty, the residents of Erlenbach in Simmental would be about as long-lived as anyone on this earth. What boy would not want to grow up with 7,100-foot Stockhorn Mountain in his backyard? This majestic masterpiece of God’s handiwork is such a charming place that today a cable car has been built to access the summit.
Among the clouds, one can eat at a restaurant while filling his soul with the inspiration from the grandiose views. One has to wonder what Jacob Ammon would think to see a cable car floating over his home today. Jacob Ammon was born early in 1644 to Michael and Anna Ammon. He was baptized as an infant on February 12, 1644 in the Erlenbach Reformed Chapel.
The list still exists and lives are still being shaped by Jacob’s influence three and a half centuries later. There’s a lot of myths surrounding Jacob Ammon. The question might be asked, I’ve often wondered where the Amish come from. And I used to wonder that and I didn’t really know. I just, I knew I was Amish and I had Amish people around me and didn’t really know
where it came from. This is a little excerpt from Unser Leit books by Leroy Beachy. He’s writing about a time when, as a young boy, he was visiting with his parents somewhere and this man, Filthy, asked the question about where the Amish came from. Well, the people around there didn’t really know. The people at that table didn’t really know.
It’s an old girl that had a ready answer. And it’s kind of humorous. I’ll read it here. She said, "At one time long ago, there were only Indians in America, and since their tribes were always fighting with each other, there never came to be very many of them." She went on to explain that at the same time in Europe, the white men had never been engaged in wars and so had become overcrowded. A meeting was held in 1492 in which it was decided to send three shiploads of people to America to alleviate the situation.
The people chosen to leave were called pilgrims, and the ships were named Niña, Pinta, and Santa Maria. As the ships were crossing the ocean, the captain, John Smith, had been busy preparing three papers which he read to the passengers when they landed. On the papers were the rules they were to live by in America. The passengers of one ship were to be Amish, those on the second ship, conservative, and those on the third, Mennonite.
And those that weren’t either of those, or any of those categories, Elsie had another quick answer. They were Diabcogni, those who had defected. Well, that’s kind of a humorous concoction of some details that were mixed together, and she came up with this story.
What often gets said is that the Amish simply split off the Mennonites. And one thing to say about that is, if that were the case, we would expect to find many of the same last names, which is not what we find. We’ll come into that again a little later.
By the state. Because she had carelessly brought fire and transported it without proper receptacles. Verena asked for forgiveness and paid a fine of five shillings. Somewhere that’s still in the records that as a young married couple, they were fine for being too careless with fire. Jacob appears to have remained faithful to the state religion through the late 1770s.
A wife and children, a good trade, a house, relative financial stability, a state approved church. So here we have another one or two excerpts of things that get said or myths about the Amish division. Jacob Ammon was a ruthless Swiss bishop who took it upon himself to convince others of his own ideas.
And in his rage, he excommunicated all the Swiss ministers. And there’s Elsie giving her spiel of her version of the story where the Amish came from. And here’s another excerpt from Unser Leit. It’s an example of many truths and untruths that get mixed together and stories that get passed on.
And so on of where the Amish come from. Remember, this is largely untrue statements. Jacob Ammon, stern and censorious Swiss schismatic Anabaptist Mennonite elder, Ammon brought about the split within the German-speaking Swiss Anabaptist Mennonites between 1693 and 1697, which resulted in the formation of the Old Order Amish. Ammon, as the conscientious and ultra-conservative bishop of the Erlenbach congregation, Canton of Bern, tried to force his views on all of the congregations,
non-believers, and ostracized, lapsed members. The others balked. Ammon’s stirred dissension, excommunicating recalcitrants. Ammon’s sect was forced to adopt his rigid rules regarding uniformity of dress, untrimmed beards, and foot washing as a practice of worship. After experiencing extreme persecution, particularly in Germany, the Amish emigrated to William Penn’s colony in North America, settling on a rich farmland near Lancaster, Pennsylvania,
Alsatian, Palatine, Mennonite practices of 1700. Now, Leroy Beachy went on to say there that out of that last piece that I read, that there were 15 untruths and nine verifiable truths in that whole statement. But that is often what gets passed on. And I would like to
dig into who was Jacob Ammon really, what was life like in his time, and dig up some of those details. It may not surprise you, but in the time of Jacob Ammon, a tailor got in trouble for making a pair of pants which were too fancy. Now, Jacob Ammon was a tailor. What may surprise you is that it was not Jacob Ammon who thought that pants with a crease in them were too far out.
Yes, it was the Chorgericht, or the Moral Police, located less than 10 miles from Jacob Ammon’s hometown of Erlenbach, that fined a tailor for making creases in pants for his customers. Known as sumptuary laws, such restrictions were in place all across Europe. In an attempt to keep the serfs, or the poor people, from thinking too highly of themselves, fancy clothes were restricted to only the nobility. And here’s just an example of
some laws that were enforced in Switzerland in the time of Jacob Ammon. I’m not going to read all of them, but the state church had their own Moral Police that made sure that people stayed in line and were going to have to just keep moving. So Jacob Ammon, it seemed like he had everything that it would take to make a man happy. He had his
well off financially. He had his own home, wife and children. He was a member of the approved Reformed Church. But these things cannot satisfy the deepest longings of the human heart. At some point, the Anabaptists and their beliefs began to draw his attention. How interesting it would be to know how that came about. His older sister, Magdalena, had married Anthony Wolf, and their oldest son, Hans, ended up among the Anabaptists
in later years. The last names of Jacob’s maternal grandparents, Hans Rupp and Magdalena Fry, would become Anabaptist names which were transported to America. Who was the first to convert to Anabaptism? Who influenced whom? Dozens of families within a 10-mile radius of Jacob’s home would eventually join the Swiss Brethren, abandoning the Reformed Church. The day came when Jacob himself had to choose to follow Christ, even though it meant living as a hated outlaw, a ridiculed Anabaptist,
a hunted fugitive, and a fleeing refugee. In those days, Anabaptism spreads like fire. It may have been the strongest influx of fresh converts that the Swiss Anabaptist movement has seen since its beginning. How is it that over 200 new family names appear to be added to the Anabaptists in the space of about one generation?
The majority of modern Amish family names can be traced back to the brave souls who left the Reformed Church in Canton Bern in the 1670s to 1690s. Can we imagine 200 new Amish family names in the next 20 years, and all of them from one county? Anabaptism was truly spreading like wildfire, or from the perspective of the Reformed authorities, like terrible invasive weeds.
It must have happened in those alpine foothills. We will probably never know the details, because those who were acting as evangelists had to do so with greatest secrecy, lest they be found out and imprisoned, or even killed. Most of what we know about the heroic nighttime meetings, the secret baptisms, and the hard choices to be true to God come from various sources.
We just know that there was a tremendous amount of people getting converted from the Reformed Church and coming over to the Anabaptists. And because of persecution, because of hard times that they were in, everybody tried to not be broadcasting the stories. So many, many stories back through there.
Have been lost. Maybe sometime we’ll find sources where we can learn of some of those stories of faith and valor. But for now, most of it has been lost to history. So here is a list of the names that joined the Swiss Brethren in the Bernese Oberland in the late 1600s.
Amish roots, I should say. You probably are a descendant of some of these people. And there’s a very good chance that your name is in this list. Towards the bottom on the right, you’ll see Reynolds, which is a my last name. Reno would be coming from that. Just a slightly different spelling. So it’s pretty fascinating. Can you imagine in your county?
Different last names coming to the faith in a matter of one generation. That is pretty mind-boggling, isn’t it? And there’s the completion of that list. And it’s very, very interesting to read down through and see just how many are in the Amish faith today. Not all of them, but most of them. And most Amish names are in that list. So it’s clear to see that the
Amish church is not simply a split off of the Mennonites. Otherwise, we would see many, many more of the same last names than what we do. There was one particularly zealous evangelist named Ulrich Müller. Court records show there were at least 18 people fined for housing Ulrich or giving him a place to preach. The fines were as much as two years wages or the equivalent of $60,000.
Can you imagine? Would you be willing to house a preacher, a preacher of the true faith that was being chased, and you would give him a place to sleep and hide him at the risk of two years wages? These people were dedicated. This tremendous advance against the kingdom of darkness was not without consequences.
They did not squelch or restrict the movement, but they were stupendous failures. Despite Ulrich Müller and others being imprisoned, in these years the church was blessed with less stiff persecution than the Bern Council demanded. Some attribute this to the semi-tolerant Schultheiss, or town mayor, at Thun, Carl Manuel. He held office from 1686 to 1692 and may have obstructed the anti-Anabaptist efforts of the Reformed pastors and lower government
officials in his territory. Although he was a fervent and pious churchman who was involved in bringing more than 200 Piedmont-Waldensian refugees to Thune, he was not entirely tolerant of Anabaptists. Records show his involvement in more than one imprisonment of Anabaptists, but there was another side to the story. At church one Sunday, after the regular sermon, the preacher began to inform the congregants of the evils of the Anabaptists.
He simply asked the preacher to leave and then turned to the waiting congregants. One has to ask himself, he told them, if the reason for all of our people leaving us and turning to the Anabaptists has to do with the failings of the preachers or not. So here was a town mayor that recognized that the preaching of the Anabaptists was much more alive than the preachers in the Reformed churches,
saying it was, at least in part, the preacher’s fault. Interesting. Karl Manuel of Thun was not the only Reformed person critical of the sinful lives of many of the Swiss Reformed clergy. In many government edicts regarding Anabaptism, the preachers with their sinful lives are blamed for causing people to leave the Reformed church and turn to Anabaptism.
From a seedbed of the Amish movement, two Reformed preachers were particularly ungodly. One was beheaded for the lawless deeds of his youth, while his successor was fired for embezzlement and dull preaching. So dull, in fact, that it is said that a town official was the only person to attend his sermons. Jacob Ammon himself was converted from the Reformed church to the Anabaptists in 1678 or 1779 at about the age of 34. Some converted to Anabaptism from a life of wickedness,
others were sincere Reformed churchgoers who got tired of hypocrisy in the state church. At this time, if someone moved from the state church to the Anabaptists, the government would try to confiscate his property. And in order to get around that, many times they would quickly sell their property, put it into somebody else’s possession.
After the confiscation of his property, he sold it to his younger brother in 1679. In 1680, the governor of Oberhofen wrote to the Chorgericht of Bern asking what to do with Jacob Ammon of Erlenbach, who was now infected by the Anabaptist sect. The answer was, if he refuses to recant, banish him from the canton and confiscate his property. Those were the times, and that was what it was like. That was the cost that people faced to follow Jesus.
The words that Jesus said, those that will follow him must deny self, and that it may cost father, mother, wife, children, lands, and so forth. That was very real in this time. The next historical record we have of Jacob. Nearly a decade later, he was living in Alsace, France, and ordained as a minister and later as a bishop.
The last martyr among the Swiss Brethren, Hans Landis. He was beheaded in Zurich in 1614. Although persecution was still an ongoing reality, it was less intense. There was still loss of property, and there was floggings going on, and banishments, and sometimes children were taken away from parents. There were still very real costs, but there had been quite some time since
there was actual martyrdom. It seems like segments of the church were cooling off. There was a certain Heinrich Funk, who was being shunned as a matter of church discipline by the upper brethren, that is in the Oberland, but not by the lower brethren, those in Emmental. This shows a possible rift early on in Jacob’s life in the area of church discipline.
By friends and relatives in order to be baptized as infants so they could enjoy Swiss citizenship. This would have been unthinkable among the earlier Swiss Brethren. See, if a baby was not baptized and put into the baptismal record, he would not be granted Swiss citizenship. He couldn’t be a landowner. Many other privileges that would have been denied him. So in order to get around that, the parents didn’t take the babies themselves.
They were supposed to get baptized, but some were allowing them to be taken by others. The compromise in this area was setting in. Lying was another thing that the more lenient of the ministers were not using discipline for anymore. Hans Reist, a minister in Emmental, admitted that a woman in his church had told a lie, but had not been disciplined for it. See, lying was very tempting in those times.
And you could lie about somebody’s whereabouts or this or that. Maybe it will save you a lot of money, a lot of trouble, if you could escape the ever-present suspicions of the state church. In Emmental, there was a state preacher that reported that he went to visit a man that he knew, or at least suspected, to be an Anabaptist.
The man’s wife informed him that the man was not at home because he had gone to town. However, about that time, not knowing that his wife had just reported him as gone off to town, the man stepped out of the cellar. He had heard the preacher’s voice, and when he realized who it was, he had decided he would like to talk to him. Oops. Was this an accident? A misunderstanding? Had the wife really thought that her husband had gone to town?
He lied. Lied plainly and openly. Some members were occasionally attending the state church in order to avoid discrimination. So the state church had its rules that you must attend at least so much or you’ll be in trouble. So some were starting to go attend enough to stay out of trouble. In this environment,
of some slipping into laxity, with large segments of zealous first-generation converts, a rift was in the making. Church discipline was increasingly on the hot seat. Much of the drift and the compromise that I’m talking about here was happening in Emmental, down in the lower parts, down closer to the bigger towns. Whereas in Oberland,
there were two-generation Christians and less prosperity. There was less compromise. And the rift was starting to happen between Oberland and the lower lands. So excommunication and shunning. Church discipline. What do we do with these people that are compromising, allowing their babies to be baptized, going to the state church in order to stay out of trouble, and other compromises that were happening?
How, as ministers, do we stop this drift, stop this cooling off, this lukewarmness? What do we do about it? So excommunication and shunning was obviously being talked about and discussed and so forth. What specifically did Paul mean when he wrote about an excommunicated person with such a one, know not to eat?
It means to not allow them to have communion. The scripture in question would be 1 Corinthians 5, 9 and 10 and 11.
So there was a lot of discussion about what exactly did Paul mean here. And there were some that were taking a more strict route and some that were being lenient. Some believed it referred to the eating of common meals. And others, like I said, were taking the easier route, saying it referred only to communion. And here’s a writing that someone wrote.
Oh, no.
So, there were rumors that some of the ministers in Emmental were consoling the true-hearted. Here’s another subject. There were those that they called true-hearted that were sympathizers, but they weren’t actively identifying with the Anabaptists. And let me just read this. There were rumors that some of the ministers in Emmental were consoling the true-hearted and telling them that they were saved because of their good deeds toward the Anabaptists.
These true-hearted people were also called Halbtäufer, which means half-Anabaptists. These true-hearted agreed with the Anabaptists’ teachings and even risked their own safety to support and help the Anabaptists. For example, hiding them from officials sent out to arrest Anabaptists. Some of the true-hearted were themselves government officials, but they were unwilling to take up Jesus’ cross by being baptized and joining the persecuted brotherhood.
Jacob Ammon was indignant at the very suggestion of consoling the true-hearted with salvation. Remember, he was a convert from the state church. He was not brought up in the Anabaptist church. He was surrounded by many who had made the same decision he had to leave everything behind, even the security of the state church, and take up the cross with the Anabaptists. Could there be a less demanding way? Could he give his blessing to those who halted between two opinions?
Unwilling to follow Christ all the way should be consoled in their non-commitment. The Oberlanders decided to send a delegation of ministers to Emmental to discuss these matters of concern that they had. Jacob Ammon was chosen to go, along with his fellow minister, Nicholas Augsburger, and several others. Church discipline was central to their concerns, as how else will we keep the church pure in these times of compromise? One of the questions asked to the Emmental ministers was,
the question of social shunning, to which some replied that they believed in and thought it should be observed more consistently. Hans Reist, one of the senior ministers, however, stated that what goes into the mouth does not defile the person, but what comes out of the mouth, that defiles a man. So he was suggesting that sitting and eating with an excommunicated person, no problem. What goes in the mouth doesn’t defile the person.
The Oberlander delegation asked for a meeting with all the local ministers present. The agreed upon day arrived, and Hans Reist was missing from the meeting. One was sent to see if he could come, and his reply was, "This is the time of harvest. I don’t have time to come." To make matters worse, some of the others that previously agreed with the Oberlander ministers now were backing down.
They believed in shunning, and now they were saying they didn’t. And Hans Reist refused to come to a meeting. Things were intensifying, and emotions were high. Having had enough, the delegation of ministers led by Jacob promptly excommunicated Hans Reist and six other ministers. Many of the lay members present were shocked and begged him to show forbearance, but Jacob would not be moved.
Something the lay members may not have realized. So they had been here in Emmental for a number of weeks, waiting till everybody could agree to a date set for a meeting. You know how it is when you make a meeting or plan on a meeting. Sometimes it takes a while till everybody can get there. So they finally agreed on having a meeting where everybody would be present.
And Jacob and the others, at the risk of being located by the authorities and imprisoned or fined with hefty fines, they stayed in the area, laid low, did some preaching, and finally the time of the agreed-upon meeting had come, and Hans Reist was absent and refused to come.
All right, Peter Zimmerman, Jacob’s companion, said, there you have it. And they left the meeting without shaking hands with anyone. In the aftermath that followed, there were some heated exchanges and two more excommunications. In a follow-up meeting, Jacob walked out when Peter Geiger, one of the excommunicated, was speaking. So they had agreed that they were going to come together, they were going to hear each other out, and instead of doing that, Jacob,
shared his part, and then he walked out when Peter was ready to share. And was that because he was excommunicated? I don’t know why he did that. That seems like a definite failure on his part. So this confrontation during the summer of 1693 was only the beginning of a painful division. At the conclusion of the confrontation, nine Emmental Anabaptist ministers had been excommunicated by the Oberlanders. There were obvious deficiencies in the Emmentaler churches.
Which the Oberlanders tried to address, but they sometimes failed in their attitudes. We must remember that as far as we know, all the Oberlander ministers were first-generation Anabaptists. As such, their methods of dealing with sin in the church did not have the years of experience that we may take for granted. Jacob had been an Anabaptist less than 15 years, and his brother Uli for perhaps only half that amount. Within a decade, the Oberlanders would express extreme repentance for the way they had handled the matter.
Jacob Ammon’s actions were not always above reproach. Yet we should recognize that he probably truly meant well. He believed that sin was in the camp. He was under extreme pressure from the state that was hunting him, and from fellow ministers who one day said they supported him, and only days later, suddenly, they didn’t. Unfortunately, it seems for the next 250 years, many would not forgive Jacob Ammon for his failures in the matter.
The Oberlanders probably started out with all good intentions and attitudes. Yet the pressure of the situation got the best of them, in some instances. This created unnecessary pain and distrust in some who otherwise may have eventually acknowledged the sin in their midst. As it was, it seems evident that the whole underlying source of stress was that of friction between older, lukewarm, established Anabaptism with a newer, zealous, and revived group of fresh converts.
This same story has been repeated again and again throughout church history, and had happened many times before this occasion as well. The new converts want purity and consistency, while those who have grown up in the movement do not like the boat getting rocked. The zeal of the new Oberlander converts, and the laxity of at least some of the lukewarm, established Anabaptists, would very likely have clashed sooner or later, even if Jacob Ammon would never have been involved. It is time that Jacob quits getting blamed for the division.
Yes, his failures added fuel to the fire, but underlying the whole situation were two visions, two irreconcilable visions, church discipline and permissiveness, zeal and lukewarmness. So that’s the end of my screen sharing there. I’m going to come back in here and discontinue the sharing. All right. So just recapping a little bit.
So how are we doing? How will we keep from drifting into lukewarmness as we go from generation to generation? And how will we, if we get challenged by fresh new converts that are very earnest about church discipline, about holiness, about evangelism,
and about being on fire for God? Can we make sure that we don’t make the same mistakes of division and getting upset about those that rock the boat? Can we welcome fresh blood, fresh zeal, fresh vision, and work together in that way? That would be one challenge I have. The other thing is I’m very challenged by
the dedication of these people, willingness to lose everything they had for a genuine, fresh, living walk with Christ. And the amount of converts that happened in just a generation or so, 200 families. I mean, that’s just 200 last names. I’m sure there were many, multiple families with the same last name. So definitely, there was a lot of fire going on in those hills.
Foothills of the Alps in Switzerland. And I would agree, but I’d like to hear your input. It’s not fair to stereotype Jacob Ammon as just this harsh ruler that was just focused on shunning, and that’s all he could think about. We’ve seen clearly that he had a zeal for God, and as a minister,
he was very zealous to remain on the narrow way. So there’s so much more that could be talked about after the split happened there and how things went on. Jacob, in his older years, he continued living in Alsace, which is quite a bit north of Emmental, maybe 150 miles or so.
And he retired there. I shouldn’t say retired. That’s where he lived out his life. And he was a well-loved, well-respected church leader. It seemed like he was a true servant of the gospel all his days. But I’m going to just hang it up right there and give it back to you, Elam, as the moderator. And I’d love some open discussion.
And possibly in the future, we can pick things up again and take some more lessons out of history going forward from what we looked at this morning. All right. That’s it. Well, thank you so much for that, Ephraim. I really appreciate it. You kind of came across to me like yesterday that you’re not sure if you’re ready and prepared. I definitely didn’t pick up on anything that you weren’t prepared to share this morning. So thank you for that. That was very well done.
Thank you for coming later on. Is that correct? On Amish history? I could see that happening. Sure. Good. Well, I’d encourage you to do that. There’s a lot of things I learned here this morning. And your question is, how can we avoid maybe some of the same mistakes, let’s say, on the Mennonite side? I guess they weren’t really called Mennonites back then, but what would they call the brethren or something like that? Your question was, if there’s new converts, fresh zeal that comes into the church,
avoid being those that are, I don’t know, more stuck. I’m not sure what terms he used. We should always appreciate fresh zeal, people that have a fresh love for the Lord. I think what can happen with all of us is we can be rocked asleep by ease and comfort and tradition. And we don’t want our boat rocked, but we should always treasure people that have a zeal for the Lord.
And fire. And we need to be those people ourselves. It’s a thing. And I think with like more of the Mennonite side of things, yeah, they didn’t want to lose their farms. They were compromising whether it was having their babies baptized and things like that. I really appreciate a friend of mine that says, yeah, we own our own houses and lands and whatnot, but we should always have a loose hold on what we own.
We’re tested whether am I taking, you know, what route am I going to take? Am I going to compromise so I can keep my house? Or do I have a loose hold on it where I can easily let go of it? And that’s something we need with our earthly possessions. We always need to have a loose hold on it where we can easily let go of it if the challenge ever comes. But yeah, I don’t want to take a lot of time here. But again, I really appreciate you sharing and you shared some of the cultural, social issues that were going on over Jacob’s.
Time, things that he was facing, the moral police, the law. So I don’t know if I was aware of that, that there was a law that the poor people couldn’t wear certain kind of clothing, that the fancy clothing was more the elite. Yeah, I think that was a new one for me. So yeah, just different points you brought out that was very helpful. So is there anybody in the audience that would like to ask you from a question or make a comment?
Really appreciate y’all coming on this morning. Yes, Ephraim, how are you this morning? Very good. Praise God. Brother John, how are you? Okay, so you said, or Andrew St. Marie said 200 families. You were saying there was 200 of the Amish at the start. Is that correct?
Well, there was 200 different last names that joined the Anabaptists in one generation, in one area. So that was all of the Anabaptists? That was just in the Bernese Canton. Okay. Okay. So how many are there now? How many Amish last names? Yes. Is that the question? Okay. Yes. That’s a good question.
I don’t know if there’s more than that. If you look down through the list, some of those names aren’t among the Amish anymore. And there’s some that have been added, but I would say most in that list, you can still find Amish by that last name. So give or take, probably not that much different. Yeah. And the reason I’m asking is I’m looking at this list of people right now who are listening to you.
Terry Clifton. That doesn’t sound like a Mennonite name either and myself. So it seems that this thing is just keeping on going in that respect. Now, do you feel like they were adding at that time, you know, as people were joining? Yeah, that part I’m not understanding.
Too much. But, you know, has much changed in, you know, these 300 years? That’s a good question. Certainly there was a fire going on there. The times were ripe. I guess the dull preaching and the hypocrisy and all that in the Reformed Church wasn’t working for all these people. And they were just coming over in mass. There’s probably quite a lot of factors why that kind of,
you know, steam didn’t really carry on through, you know, other times since. I’d like to see more of that. I’m not sure if I’m completely answering your question, John. So, I have some answers to that. I don’t know at all, but I don’t know if there was a lot of last names added to the Amish, but there was some.
What’s his name in Michigan, Elam? Michael Sturry. Yeah, Michael Sturry. I don’t know how that name was added. He plans on coming on at some point, sharing his testimony. He may share some of that history. But then, Lambright was added to the Amish name, but that was through young children coming to the Amish, I think, as a place to stay or something.
But being added as a convert, really. So, just a thought. That’s true. And I can think of two names here in the Shippensburg area among the Amish. One is Lee. That was a little Irish. No, sorry. A little. Was it Irish? Yeah, I think it was an Irish name where a little boy was taken care of by the Amish. And the other one is Flawed as another name in the area. Yeah, both of those names came in among the Amish here in North America. So, yeah.
That’d be a fun study to do. Maybe that’s your next project, Brother Ephraim. It could be. Appreciate the question, John. Are there anybody else that has a question or anything, comment? Hello, this is Terry Clifton. Can you hear me? Yes. Yes, we can hear you well. Thanks for joining us this morning, Brother Terry. Good morning, brothers. I wanted to say that I see a theme throughout.
The men and women of God that were faithful to the Word. There’s some staying power in their testimony that draws people that want the same thing. And I think that’s the theme that, as I’ve come to understand a kingdom or a historic faith understanding of Scripture, before I even knew what it really was,
people that did hold on to the things of this world loosely. The more they’ve seen everything that they have, not as their own, but as that they’re just stewards over the things that the Lord has given them. And so, what I’m trying to say is, I’ve seen that played out in the lives of Brother John Higgins when I first saw him at Kingdom Fellowship Weekend in 2023. And Ephraim, when I met you, I could tell you have a love of the Lord.
And it doesn’t come without challenges. But the thing is, like I see, is you already set your hand to the plow. And same with Elam and Atlee. I’m just trying to say that men like Jacob Ammon, I’m sure, would be looking on. I have confidence that we’ll be able to see him again someday.
And ask for an example today. Yeah, thank you for that, Terry. Yeah, is there anyone else? Feel free to speak up and say what may be on your heart. Yeah, thanks so much for joining us this morning. And it’s been a blessing. And thank you, Brother Ephraim, for the work you’ve put into all this. And definitely, if there’s anyone else out there that would like to say something, we’d like to give them time.
We’re almost hitting seven o’clock here. All right. Well, again, have a blessed day. I think the sun’s coming up out there. Maybe we’ll get some rain later today, but God is good. And he gave us a beautiful world to earth to live on and gave us brothers and sisters, gave us family, gave us so many blessings. And may we be a thankful people and always love the Lord with all our hearts. Would you like to close us in prayer, Brother Ephraim?
And then we can consider ourselves dismissed. Yeah, let’s pray. Dear God, thank you so much for the cloud of witnesses, that great cloud of witnesses that have gone before us and many, many faithful brothers and sisters that live in our day and have affected our lives in so many ways. I thank you for the movements that were true, that the many people that believed and were saved and lived faithful lives,
in the 1600s that we looked at this morning and many other times in history that we can look at and learn and be encouraged. Bless all that have come on here this morning, everybody that listens to this later. I pray that you would use it in your way to challenge us to love and good works, to faithfulness, to the true faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, to strive to enter in at the straight gate, walk the narrow way that leads to life and be faithful on it. Bless us this day.
I Hope For Wondering Amish efforts. Use it to build your kingdom, to bring glory to your name. In Jesus’ name, amen. All right, blessings to you all.
Leave a Reply