Papist Support for Murder?!?!

I had just read the book, The Anabaptist Story, by William R. Estep and then wrote my article on baptism. Since the book mentioned the Waldenses sect I decided to read a book in my library which I hadn’t read since 2007: History of the Waldenses, by J.A. Wylie.

The Waldenses were essentially the original protestants, long before the Reformation, and they had the New Testament translated into their own language. The commonality with the Anabaptist was that they both read the Bible as written and didn’t add or subtract from it for their beliefs. Both had issues with the papist religion: the Waldenses refused to accept the false teaching of the Mass and the Anabaptists disagreed with infant baptism.

There was nothing in their teachings that I found in these books that could be considered heresy, but the papist church (i.e. the POPE) decided they were heretics and therefore must be destroyed. Both sects had papist armies and leaders persecuting, attacking and murdering them for “heresy.” The papists killed all people of all ages in some of the most heinous ways possible. 

On 8/10/26 the following comment was posted to my article about baptism but I moderated it out and decided to address it in this post. Here is the comment:

John S. Erwin commented on "What About Infant Baptism?"

I know that this is going to send literal chills down Glenn's spine, but I support the persecution of those Anabaptist heretics. My basis for this is Romans 13. The Roman Catholic Church was a government and it had been entrusted with the power of the sword to protect the citizens. If Rome had successfully stomped them out, we would not have many of the cultural problems that exist today, such as the normalization of homosexuality.

First, it didn’t send any chills down my spine, rather just a shake of the head at such blatant ignorance and scripture-twisting. 

Second, the Catholic Church was originally just the entire Christian Church but Constantine made it a virtual part of all government systems, leading the Roman Church into apostasy and heresy.  NOWHERE in the Bible will you find that the church or government has authority to persecute and MURDER those who disagree with the papist church. Murdering people, especially in horrid and heinous ways, proved that the papist church was NOT a Christian church. Murdering people for not accepting infant baptism or the Mass is not protecting anyone. 

Third, in no way could/would Romans 13 refer to the need to murder so-called heretics.

Lastly, being against baptism and the mass would have absolutely NO connection with cultural problems today—that analogy is just plain STUPID!