Waldenses: A Mission Movement Season 1 | Episode 7
Following their persecution in the lower valleys,
the Waldensians who moved up here into the higher valleys
did not do so to live life as hermits.
Number one, they fled persecution,
but once they got here they tried to establish as normal a life as possible,
and normal for them was training missionaries,
and training their young people in how to study and how to teach the Bible.
This here, the College of the Barbs, stands today as just one example
of what would have been numerous schools
that would have been spread all over the valleys,
where they would teach and train their young people
to be missionaries throughout Europe.
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Here in the College of the Barbs is a Bible copy table,
a place where the students would have painstakingly, by hand,
written the Bible out from beginning to end.
You see, the Bible was very important to the Waldensians.
They had it in their own language.
It formed the basis for congregational worship.
There were also societies of young people
that would meet together and would commit large parts of the Bible to memory.
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After studying here in the colleges in the valleys,
the students would be sent out
to many of the great universities around Europe.
We know that some of the countries that they went to
were England, Scotland, France, Spain, Germany,
the Czech Republic, Poland, Lithuania, Bulgaria and Croatia.
And as they went out as students,
they would study, whether to be a doctor, a nurse, whether it was to be a lawyer,
they would study various subjects,
but their main purpose of going there was to be an undercover missionary.
They would take the Bible with them.
They would also send some missionaries out
who would just go out as workers.
They may be traveling craftsman or traveling artisans and tradesmen
and they would also take the Bible with them
and they would move and travel to different parts of Europe.
They couldn't have the Bible, it was illegal,
and so they would take their coat
and they would unstitch the seam of their coat
and then just inside the two layers of the coat
they would put a few pages of the Bible.
And they would travel with just a few pages of the Bible, not a whole copy.
And when they found someone
that they thought was maybe interested in the gospel,
they would take the Bible out of the stitches of their coats
and share the truths of God's Word with them.
You know maybe you're working today in a doctor's office,
maybe you're working as a nurse in a hospital,
maybe you're a teacher in a school,
or maybe you're a lawyer in some law firm.
You are not there simply to collect a paycheck to pay the bills.
You are there as a missionary.
God has put you there for a specific purpose.
There may be someone in your workplace that God knows only you can reach.
As students as well, the first reason why they went to study
was not to get the best degree,
but it was to be a missionary in the great universities in Europe.
You today maybe a missionary in a great institution;
you are not there just for academic excellence,
you are there also to seek and find people that you can share the gospel with.
And the other thing we learn from the Waldensians
is how important the Bible was to them.
If they would take just a few pages and put it in their coats
and then share it with other people,
how much more should we commit the Bible to memory,
how much more should we commit the Bible to study,
that we would know God's word and be able to share it wherever we are.
They stand today, these Waldensians, as an inspiration to us
and may it inspire us for service,
may it inspire us for study wherever we are.