We begin this study was no fear or in-trepidation!! Of all the denominations that exist, she has been the most vocal in her insistence of error for the past 500 years! It is our usual approach in our studies to go to the Bible for a book chapter and verse or a thus saith the Lord to find anything on what is supposed to be a biblical subject. I confess to you readily at this time, that I have not been able to find anything in the Bible that mentions the Baptist Church, tells where it started, who started it, the reason our purpose of it starting, or the particular doctrines that she teaches! Having only existed for 500 to 600 years, the people of religion for the first 1600 years knew nothing about such a religious group by name or doctrine. There were glimpses of pre-doctrine some 400 years before she became a religious movement, but the existence of its teachings cannot or have not been found before the 13th century A.D.. Quotations from Baptist historians, claiming themselves to be Baptist, support rather than refute the fact that they just have not existed 1000 years yet!!
To quote from a book written by a gentleman named Benedict called History of the Baptist page 304, states the first regular organized Baptist Church of which we possess any account, is dated from 1607, and was formed in London by a Mr. Smythe, who had been a clergyman in the Church of England. Interestingly, Mr. Smythe was self-baptized. In a book called History of the Baptist, written by a man by the name of Veeder, we read,” sometime about March, 1639, Roger Williams baptized Ezekiel Holloman, who had been a member of his church at Salem: and, Holloman baptized Williams. 11 others obeyed their Lord in this way, and the first Baptist Church in America was formed. This occurred in Providence, Rhode Island. Mr. Veeder informs us that the first official use of the name is in the Baptist catechism issued by the authority of their assembly. There had been no churches before, and hence there was no need of the name. The history of the Baptist churches cannot be carried by the scientific method, farther back than the years 1611, when the first Baptist Church, consisting wholly of Englishmen, was founded in Amsterdam by John Smith. Another author, Mr. Lofton, wrote: The English Baptist Reformation, list eight kinds of Baptist churches that existed in the first 50 years, beginning with 1603. A man by the name of Whittset who wrote a book entitled: A question in Baptist History writes; “immersion was first introduced into England in 1641, and it is a monument of the recent change from sprinkling to immersion.” That the name Baptist first came into use shortly after 1641, is another evidence of the fact in question…. Henceforth they were called baptized Christians, and in due time, Baptist. The earliest instance in which this name occurs as a denominational designation, so far as my information goes, befell in the year to 1644, three years after immersion had been introduced.” According to history the Baptist came from groups who were called Mennonites, who were originally called Waldenses. What were the Waldenses? They were a movement of the religious cultural group which appeared first in Lyon, France and spread to the Alps. They were begun by Peter Waldo, declared to be heretical by the Roman Catholic Church in 1215. On the rise of the Protestant Reformation, church leaders met with Swiss and German Calvinist and agreed to join with the Reformed Church, adopting the Calvinist tenets and becoming its Italian arm as their confession of faith still tells us. Their claim to fame was denying the supremacy of Rome. Interestingly, they kept the Sabbath day- this was later dropped when they joined the larger group. In 1487 Pope Innocent the VIII, issued a bull for the extermination of the Waldenses. The massacre that ensued was so brutal that Oliver Cromwell, then ruler in England, defended them. John Milton’s famous poem, On the late massacre in Piedmont verify their existence. Those who survived came to America on three chartered ships and settled in the Delaware area. There they were championed by their greatest preacher Roger Williams.
