THE MENNONITE BROTHERHOOD IN RUSSIA (1789 - 1910), P. M. Friesen, 1911

an we had earlier been in Babel. Consider the wondrous ways of God for he will reveal the foolishness of the evil spirits in due time. [One of his co-workers becomes ‘proud and defiant,’ returns to the ‘church’ where he falls into disgrace because of immorality. . . .] Thereafter Satan approached us with many hypocritical matters through his servants B. R., K. F., even H. W. and M. W. These formulated disgusting religious practices. B. R., for example, made extremely long prayers and would often spend long periods of time during the night lying in a ditch or by a street, either at home or in strange villages, nearly naked, writing and praying loudly. Indeed, he reorganized and lengthened the Lord’s Prayer to suit his fancy. If they could not weep while saying grace at table, they would leave the table and not eat the 132 IN RUSSIA 1789-1860 food set before them, eat only poor food or go hungry, and then, during the winter time, go and lie nearly naked in the ditches. On one such occasion R.’s brother died. K. F. desired that we should be conspicuously plain before others, have no fellowship with anyone but ourselves, fill no office [a principle they have more or less adhered to], 55 not pass on any letter from the colony administration, and hold all things in common. . . . M. W. became ill, and when he had recovered he said that it had been revealed to his spirit that the world would be destroyed in the summer; he also spoke forcefully from the Bible so that many people were filled with fear and dread. I knew that everything that did not fully agree with the Word of God was not of God. But what was it? I was too careless, too unobservant; I did not study God’s Word or pray enough to receive enlightenment, wisdom and power. . . . But when the aforementioned W. came up with his false wisdom— for he had postulated a date and said how terrible the burning, banging and crackling would be— he came to me with a number of my brethren and some others. Because I paid no heed to his prophecies, he applied the following words of Jesus to me: Every sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven man, but the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, etc. I was opposed to much of this and so prepared a sermon on John 13:35. In my weakness I delivered it in love to God stating that according to Rev. 22:18, 19, we should not add or take anything away from God’s Word or concern our consciences about things not grounded in Scripture. Sad to say, however, this created a great deal of strife among us. . . . In response, I prepared a sermon on Matt. 12:43-45. This, because of our b lindn ess only made matters worse. . . . There was such a terrible blindness in our midst concerning the ban that it was impossible for God, under these conditions, to give us the victory over our enemy. Thereupon, I prepared another message, this one for the church members’ meeting . , . taken from Menno Simons, Peter Peters and the speeches of several mart