Five years after Luther nailed his theses to the Wittenburg
door, a baby boy was born in Belgium, named Guido or Guy de Bres. Guido’s father was a
blauschilder, a painter
of blue, just before the time when Holland's Delftware became famous. Guido grew up in a devout Roman Catholic
family, but Gutenberg’s printing press was churning out the writings of Luther
and Calvin and others, and it had its effect.
Guido became evangelical in college around 20 years old, which we
rightly celebrate. But it made him a
marked man.
Spain dominated the lowlands of Belgium and Holland in those
days, and they actively suppressed Anabaptists and Reformers and
Lutherans. We’ve heard of the Spanish
Inquisition. de Bres fled to England,
like many Protestants on the continent were doing. There he met many leading reformers: a Jewish
convert to the Reformation who was THE world expert in the Hebrew
language. A Polish Baptist who wrote the
London Confession. Most important,
Calvin’s right-hand man, Theodore Beza. De
Bres found his way to Geneva, imbibing closely Calvin’s thought and his pastoral actions. As with most refugees from
their native land, Guy de Bres longed to return home and spread Reformation
truth to his own people. Calvin and
other Genevans encouraged him to do so, but to count the cost first. Don't forget the Spanish Inquisition! 12,000 Protestants in the lowlands were
martyred in those days for their faith.
But Guido went home.
At 37 years old, de Bres was an undercover preacher and
pastor. He would meet with the church
from house to house under the guise of dinner parties, much like this one,
where he would lead a worship service and celebrate communion. He would disguise himself as a beggar in the
streets, so the soldiers wouldn’t question and arrest him as a Protestant
agitator. He would preach in the open
fields, with scouts on the lookout for Spanish soldiers.
Inspired by his Polish friend who wrote the London
Confession, following the footsteps of Calvin, who wrote catechisms and his
Institutes, Guy wrote his own confession, before he was 40 years old. He wrote because he didn’t like Spain’s
propaganda. They said all these Protesting
protestants are the same – they are rebels and fanatics. They won’t follow the church and they want to
set up their own state. In part they
were right – the Anabaptists WERE extremists who wanted to set up their own
communes apart from civil authority – many of them were rabid charismatics who
followed their own feelings of the Spirit more than the Word of God. Guido de Bres wanted to tell the world,
especially Spain, that there were reasonable Reformers, willing to submit to
the crown, who simply wanted to follow the Word of God as they read it. So he wrote the Belgic Confession.
The same year he wrote it, on this very day, November 1, he went
to Lansing, I mean, the seat of government in his state. Where the Democrat, I mean,
the Spanish crown’s governor lived and ruled. And in the cover of darkness, he
took a copy of his confession and threw it over the castle wall. He wanted the Spanish government to read of
his faithfulness to God and His Word, and to stop persecuting his people.
Spain did not listen.
Their Standard Operating Procedure was to attack and lay siege to a city with an "outbreak
of cases" of the Reformation – it was a plague in their minds. And in 1567 they did just that, and caught
Guy in their nets.
They arrested
him.
He wrote to his wife and children,
urging them to trust that God was sovereign over such a trial, as much as any
other time. He second-guessed himself a
bit: “if we hadn’t traveled together openly in the street as pastors those few
times, maybe they wouldn’t have arrested us!”
But He turned to the Lord, and trusted God with his life: “This
has come to pass from Your hand.”
He was hanged the same year - 1567 - and he was 45 years old. I’m a Reformed pastor, aged 44. I imagine myself as Pastor Guido. The Michigan state police have me imprisoned,
questioned, and hanged for our Protestant/Christian faith.
In spite of the obvious hostility of the secular left to the conservative, traditional Christian faith and life like a woman such as Amy Coney Barrett, such as many of my readers - when you consider history, we have it REALLY good in our country.
Thanksgiving is coming.
Thank God for courageous martyrdom like Guido DeBres’. Thank God for religious liberty in our land
that keeps us free from such a threat to our very lives. Most of all, thank God for the truth of His
Word, and faithful men who summarized that truth in confessions like this
Belgic Confession. Read them. Cherish them.
Learn from them.
A Youtube cartoon on de Bres – 3 minutes – great for kids!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktN8zq4WV_0
