THINK ABOUT IT 3-7-25
Since so few have studied Church history, and so many wonder why we are Baptist, the following article gives you just a glimpse of our history. Telling people to attend the. Church of their choice is nonsense. Many so called churches are not churches at all. HDS
WALDENSIAN PERSECUTION (Friday Church News Notes, March 7, 2025, www.wayoflife.org [email protected], 866-295-4143) – Two streams of churches have flowed through church history: true churches and false, sound churches and apostate. Century after century, the Bible-loving Waldenses were subject to the Inquisition, horribly persecuted by the popes and bishops and monks. Entire cities and towns were destroyed and valleys decimated. Countless thousands were tortured and brutally murdered. We have documented this in A History of the Churches from a Baptist Perspective, www.wayoflife.org. Consider one example. In the year 1209, Pope Innocent III was the first pope to call for a crusade against the Waldenses in France (also called Albigenses). Anyone who volunteered to war against the “heretics” was promised forgiveness of sin and many rewards. Tens of thousands took up arms for the pope and marched against the hated Waldenses. Some 200,000 were killed by the pope’s army within a few months. Two cities, Beziers (Braziers) and Carcasone, were destroyed, together with many smaller towns and villages. Some of the 40,000 inhabitants of Beziers were Roman Catholics, and when Simon de Monfort, Earl of Leicester, asked the pope’s representative how he was to separate the Catholics from the Albigenses, he answered: “Kill them all. God knows His own.” That is exactly what they did. The cruelties practiced by the Catholic persecutors were horrible. Believers and unbelievers alike were thrown from high cliffs, hanged, disemboweled, pierced through repeatedly, drowned, torn by dogs, burned alive, crucified. In one case, 400 mothers fled for refuge with their babies to a cave in Castelluzzo, which was located 2,000 feet above the valley in which they lived. They were discovered by the rampaging Catholic campaigners; a large fire was built outside of the cave and they were suffocated. Thousands were made homeless and were forced to wander in the forests and mountains to escape the persecutors. “In this manner, the war was carried on for twenty years. Town after town was taken, pillaged, burnt. Nothing was left but a smoking waste. Religious fanaticism began the war; rapacity and ambition ended it. Peace was concluded in 1229, and the Inquisition finished the deadly work” (John Christian, A History of the Baptists). This is but one tiny glimpse into the persecutions against the Waldenses and other Baptists that occurred century after century.
David Stone
Lakeway Baptist Church
Humble,Tx
