On This Day December 5 1527

Martyred for the Gospel - Hans Schlaffer

Khen Lim



Image Source: persecutedchurch.blogspot.com

As Hans Schlaffer left the Anabaptist meeting in Schwaz to head home in the mountains of Austria up and along the Inn River, the evening of December 5 1527 was frosty and unwelcome. He had planned to sit out until the break of spring before resuming his ministry. But for this ex-Roman Catholic priest, his life would change forever.

On that day, Hans Schlaffer was arraigned by local Roman Catholic authorities and dragged to the Frundsberg Castle where he was brutalised. There the priests interrogated him, forcing him to explain about his ‘heretical’ views on infant baptism to which he replied that Scripture instructs man to “hear, understand, believe and receive” God’s Word before being baptised.

To Hans, this was expressly Christian baptism and nothing less. Children have no need for baptism and the Lord had not said so Himself only because they were already His. He added that, “the Christian life is not child’s play but bitter earnestness, truth, courage and saintliness must be there.”

When asked on what authority he would say all this, Hans replied as an Anabaptist, “Our faith, actions and baptism rest on nothing but the commandment of Christ.”

Hans was always known for prayerfulness. Even on the day he was arrested, he was heard teaching hearers about prayer. Two months later, on the eve of his beheading* (Feb 3 1528), he remained intensely focused on prayer and in his final letter smuggled out of the castle and henceforth preserved, he wrote to his flock, a prayer, which ended like this:

“Oh Father in heaven, whoever lives in Christ Your Son and suffers and dies with Him will rise with Him in glory to be in His kingdom forever. This is how we have understood the holy Gospel. This is how we understand Christ and His teachings and this is how we now understand the word ‘faith’ which we never understood like this before.

“Sustain us in Your Holy Name, and let us not wander away from You, fountain of living waters, that we may hold fast to the true faith firm unto the end.”

* According to Thieleman J Van Braght in his book, Martyrology the Churches of Christ, Commonly Called Baptists, July 2012, Vol. 1 (Charleston, TX: Forgotten Books), Hans is believed to have been burnt at the stake instead.