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

appeal to us. On December 31 our daughter Maria was excommunicated by Bernhard with the words, ‘In the name of Jesus I excommunicate you! . . .” 3. We shall now allow the other side, represented by Benjamin Becker, to express itself. a) Becker writes: ‘‘To all brothers and sisters on the Kuban. Elizabethtal, December 14, 1864. This letter has been read to the whole church, and the church has said ‘Amen’ to this. May the grace of God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you, dear brothers and sisters on the Kuban! In the name of Jesus and of the church in this area I am writing to tell you about conditions here, and to tell you about the attitude of the brothers and sisters here and in the Old Colony to you, brothers and sisters on the Kuban. I wrote to you, dear brothers and sisters, that the brothers and sisters here are greatly displeased with you there on the Kuban. First of all we have heard how P. and M. and H.N. 196 have walked unworthy of the Lord during the past winter. Also, during the past summer we have received written and oral reports of the dissension among the brothers and sisters on the Kuban. The one has complained and lamented about the other, so that we here and especially the brothers and sisters of the Old Colony have lost almost all our courage to move to the Kuban, since you already have so much quarreling and dissension that God will have to come with his correction rod, and discipline you who are living there. [Compare this tone to the humble and clear judgment, both of himself and his brothers and sisters, expressed by Claassen, above, and also further below! These great judges, Br. B. Becker and those of like mind, have also been §183 420 THE MENNONITE BRETHREN CHURCH judged. They have generally not given evidence of great sanctification.] Dear brothers and sisters, Br. B. writes us, he believes that the climate is not alone to blame for the illness which you have to endure there; instead, he believes that those who do not walk uprightly before the Lord will be judged by God according to I Cor. 11. Dear brothers and sisters in the Lord, we also partly believe this, as Br. B. writes. But I want to write to you what has become clear to us brothers and sisters, expecially to those brethren who were already in the church when the N. case arose [reference is made to the difficult case of the sin of a brother during the revelations of the ‘freedom’ teaching, see #118]. God permitted this to happen, so that He might test our faith. Deuteronomy 13 says, ‘The Lord your God is testing you, to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.’ So also we believe that God at that time thus permitted the devil to test the congregation of God (the well-known instances of fallin g into sin). Now God wanted to see if we would give Him whole-hearted obedience, and let nothing of the ban cling to our hands. However! what has happened in our