Do We Still Call Ourselves Amish//A Look Into Our Amish Culture And Heritage

[Music] [Music] welcome to montana haven well the question is are we still amish and if we are why because we don't really look like it right so we kind of wanted to share with you and just talk to you about that that's right so some of you have asked us that question and many of you have probably thought that question and now we're going to try to answer it for you the best we can so where do we start uh should we start with the heritage or why we i'm not sure right why don't we start like way back because some of you we've talked a little bit about this um by the way in case you've never seen us before i'm josh and i'm priscilla and we have five children and we live in a little amish community here in libby montana and uh but let but let's jump back uh if you um and talk about uh you know back in the 15th 1500s the 16th century and we'll give a little bit of background and we're not by any means experts at this but these are the uh the things that we've researched and just grown up knowing and and read and that but we did some question and answer videos a while back and we talked a little bit about this so if you have more questions refer back to the question and answer videos and those were more lengthy and and probably more in-depth yeah and we talked a little bit more but anyways going back uh we call the amish uh are part of a um group called better known or lesser known i guess probably as the anabaptists and that basically means re-baptizer so and if you say anabaptists then that includes the amish the mennonites the hutterites yeah there's a lot of there's a lot of different streams that came out of this but it basically started in the 1500s and that's when martin luther [Music] started the reformation and a lot of people know the reformation but out of that the anabaptists came forth and they said um we are going to re-baptize as adults because we believe that the bible says that we should be baptized upon confession of our faith and not just as babies because that that time the catholics were just baptizing as babies and i guess still do but the anabaptist said these these new converts said uh we want to be rebaptized as adults and so they became known as rebaptizers yeah so i started this massive movement like these uh just [Music] [Music] it started this massive movement that really became a fire i mean just a lot it just caught on people and they were so passionate they were so passionate to follow the lord and do everything that he said in the bible and yeah so and then there was persecution right and because there were so many converts at that time it spread like wildfire and the more that they uh persecuted the christians and it still is a lot this way in a lot of countries the more that their faith grew and there was literally thousands of peoples that people that they killed and they you know killed by all kinds of awful means drowning burning at the stake uh burning alive and beheading and just all kinds of terrible things torture they had these torture racks that they put them on and pull them apart until you know trying to get them to recant yeah so it's awful awful time but through that that was the 1500s and it slowly spread throughout europe in about the mid i think around the mid 1700s they the first uh okay so let's back up a little bit i went too fast there so as this as so often unfortunately happens in revivals you know as time goes by um people start uh getting involved and more and more and so they're starting to be at this time the leader rose up by the name of uh meno simons and he started getting a following and people started following him and they became known as the mennonites and then another person came along his name was jacob ahman and a lot of people started following him and saying okay now we're amish and so it created this and then there was also jacob hutter which the hutterites came from and multiple branches there are the waldensians there's you know all kinds of uh brethren and just a lot of different a lot of streams came out of that reformation uh but one of the main reasons that we call ourselves amish is because the original uh goal that the anabaptist came out of um was my sleeve got caught in her sleep um but it was a radical fire to know the lord and that is that is our heart that is why um we choose to call ourselves an amish yeah it is our heart and our prayer that the anabaptists as a whole find themselves again in that revival fire that's right you know to have a passion to know the lord and it you know it kind of seems like they they went completely the other way than what they originally were now they are the quiet in the land they don't uh have anything to do with outsiders and they they just live their lives and there's a lot of darkness and religion now in a lot of amish communities not all of them the amish people are really they have become a culture it's a culture it's a way of life it's how they live it's how they dress it's how they look and so if someone would ask them what is your belief or what is your religion they would say christian right i think every amish person would say they're a christian right but it's so watered down and so different than it used to be you know long ago that in some instance it looks just like a religion and it has become rules and regulations instead of just a passion and a personal relationship with jesus christ so yeah in a whole it's a culture it's a cultural group that's right yeah and that's yeah that's why when we say we're still amish we're not saying uh we're amish and not christian we're christians we're we're saying we're amish because of our culture yeah and let's talk a little bit about what are some of those things in our culture you know let's just say that uh [Music] see we can draw an example for example like uh if you're born in japan you're always your culture is going to be japanese let's say you grew up in japan and you have japanese influence even if you come to the united states you're always going to have japanese influence and you're you're always going to be japanese and that's very similar i think to the amish because when we grow up in the amish community and culture and someone leaves the amish you can tell 50 years later that they were still came from the amish generally speaking because of the way they act uh the way they just you can just tell it takes one to know and i don't even i can't even explain how you just know that there's something unique about that person because they're from that culture and if you're native american we don't want you to integrate become american keep your native heritage yeah your heritage and i think it's such a blessing that we can draw the good things now does do all heritages have some bad things in them i think the answer is probably yes there's always those things that that are not good in cultures so we have decided uh as you know for us generally and as our community to leave those things that we primarily just talking about us ourselves because in our community it's really varied um but to leave those things in our culture that are not good and acceptable and to you and and pursue the things use the things that are good and have value yeah some of the things that are not good um just like in my my father's my grandparents generation and further back now my dad came out of northern indiana in the 70s and moved to montana that's where i was born but but his parents and his great his grandparents and those things they were into really witchcraft on the side they would practice they didn't call it that but they had all these rituals that they went through and different things they went through and it's still practiced by a lot of amish people so those are just that's just one example another example is uh the common practice that some communities have called room springer if you've heard of that that's not a godly principle where the church actually in some cases encourages young people to go so so the wild oats and then you know when you're done living your bad life you know maybe between six age 16 and you know hopefully 21 or something you'll come back to the church and then be a good boy or girl after that um that's not in the bible at all that you need to sow wild oats that's we need to follow the lord as in our youth and follow him with a passion purpose so those are some of the bad things and let's go and talk about some of the good things that we've decided to keep yeah one of them is community life and just uh being with community is so powerful and it's so strengthening to have a community around you that's right we help one another we understand one another and yes it can also be hard you work with the same people you go to church with and you can't just leave you you know just if you get frustrated over your job you don't just walk out and leave you have to work through it and then there's family the importance of family amish families all have big families and again some of that isn't good there's neglect there's abuse and i think some of those issues are actually coming to light in the amish communities right now we just had a pastor in our church that really ministers to amish people and he just has some amazing stories of people coming out of darkness people coming out of abuse and just healing happening so we are excited about that that's what we want to see in our amish culture that's what we identify with is the anabaptists when they first started right yeah and uh i we want to be the first ones to say that if you're amish if you're leaving the amish or if you're never been amish uh or have left the amish any wherever you are we want to say we love you we love our amish people we really do and that's one of the reason why we still call ourselves amish is because we have we have a longing and desire to see that all the amish would come to know the lord jesus as a personal savior not just them but because that's our heritage that's our culture that's that's our you know that's who we have a desire for a passion for not not just them but that's it that's where we feel like while we can really connect with understand you know if you're a non-amish person we call them english and you come into an amish you know an amish church service for example you're completely a fish out of water you don't know you know you just feel you would feel completely out of place this is the same way when the amish go into you know the outside world they feel completely out of place so when they leave the amish uh as some choose to do then they they don't know how to function they oftentimes lose their way because it's it's a difficult it's like it's like you're living in a greenhouse in antarctica and then you step outside and you don't you're completely lost you don't know what to do yeah and if you are you know if you co if you are an anabaptist or you come from the amish or mennonites and you left and i just want to say don't throw everything away that that even though even if you had an extremely bad experience there are some good things that come out of that the amish culture that this world actually needs right and that you have that you carry because you're because of your culture yeah so you actually have an anointing on you that that giftings that that that old that this culture has certain giftings yes so yeah and didn't we just how many millions of anabaptists are there right so there are so when i said we say anabaptist that includes again all the streams but there's a few years ago there's like four million uh anabaptists so there's a lot of people and just in the u.s in 2010 uh just in the u.s there was about 1.3 million that was in 2010 and i don't know what this consensus is of now uh but i assume several million at least or probably more than double that yeah by now so there's a lot of a lot of amish in mennonite and anabaptist people in the united states and across the world a lot of uh old colony mennonite people a lot of hutterites that live in canada and in south america and in russia even and scattered throughout the world and what is another thing that we still appreciate about the culture so the work ethic i think a lot of people when they think of the amish they think of generally speaking i hope uh i think we're generally known as hard working and um you know building barns in a day and those type of things uh fine furniture um so i think that's that's a blessing i think hard work is what we were called to do we were supposed to work work hard yeah and then also the amish have their own schools right which is a great blessing and i'll just give a little bit to say about that actually in the 70s and 80s i believe the amish actually went to prison for because the government said that all children have to go to public schools and the amish said no we actually have the freedom constitutionally to have our own schools so uh they actually did not send their their children to school and the um they were arrested and taken to jail but they went all the way to the supreme court and the supreme court said yes you have the right to have your own schools and so that is actually really why the every homeschooling family and every private school has actually receives a blessing because of what those men actually did because that they stood in in the gap for that changed the law for every uh homeschooling and and family and appropriate schools like that so that's one blessing that we that we have yeah and one other uh quote that i'm kind of taking this from someone else that was a different context but it was so good uh that you do not have to give a lot of times we've heard are you going to be amish are you going to be christian and we have to realize that amish is just a culture that's how we feel and that's what we choose to have it as some people actually choose to have it as religion but we don't want to choose it as a religion it's a culture for us so do we have to give our amish uh heritage to become a christian no we can be keeper heritage as an amish person and follow christ and we would pray that all the amish would come to know their lord and savior as you know their loving father and you don't have to leave the amish unfortunately what happens a lot of times people you know come to know the lord and it just doesn't go over work very well in the amish communities especially in the more conservative communities and they tend to be ostracized and eventually they get excommunicated or simply leave because of they just have no place anymore in the community yeah also the amish most of the amish people wouldn't classify us as amish any anymore because we don't look amish and the amish people look very outwardly at you and if you don't dress and look like them then they don't they say we're not amish and but just because we don't look like them doesn't mean that we're not right yeah again it's a culture for us and um this is not to say that it doesn't have value to to dress in homemade clothes if you want there's nothing absolutely nothing wrong with that um but it doesn't have any spiritual merit to it so our desire is that if you want to dress in homemade clothes wonderful but let's make sure that we're following jesus with our whole heart and we want the fire and the passion to come back into the anabaptist nation and because there's they are so devoted to what they believe uh very uh similar to um maybe jews where you know you're you're so ingrained with a certain way of living that you almost cannot change and so when you make up your mind to follow jesus you follow jesus because when you make the switch you really make the switch and yeah and you're on fire for jesus so our desire and passion is that each person not only the anabaptist but all across the world would come to know the lord and be able to follow him with that passion because we know the end of the story that's what's so awesome we know that he's going to win in the end and that if we're with him we're going to be on the winning end too so i just i we bless you and thank you i know there's some of you that are going to view this video and you're going to be like this is baloney this is whatever we bless you too and uh hey that's you know we just bless you and love you wherever you're at and we pray that that the biggest important thing is that we understand the perfect love of the heavenly father for each one of us he made us we're not here by chance we didn't come from monkeys or slime but we're here because a loving god created me and he created you and so and the father that created us loves us intimately and knows us he made us so we just have to follow him and he will show us the way we bless you on your journey yes and we know that there's a whole bunch of different cultures watching us right now and we bless every culture right every culture in this world is important god created each and every one of us and you each have a gifting and anointing on on the way you live and what you do and we just bless you with that and if you ever come in contact with an amish person i just pray that you are blessed by them and that they yeah that you can bless them because we are one family in christ if we love jesus that's right and i also want to say it may not have said this before but there are a lot of jesus loving people in the amish culture i want to we want to make sure and bring that out because that's that's important it just depends on how conservative or how uh liberal the amish communities are and how much light they have there's some very dark communities and there's some communities that are no doubt full of jesus full of light and so we just we glorify god wherever the light is that shines that it would shine brighter and more fully and just walk with jesus we're not asking you to you have to stay amish or that you have to leave the amish you have to be where jesus wants you to be yeah that's what's so important yeah the amish on a whole they they are longing to follow jesus right they are trying to follow jesus in the way they know him that's right so yeah they just don't have a full picture a lot of them and what it means to follow the lord and have the holy spirit living in you so hallelujah none of us have the whole picture right so we're all growing all on a journey but we hope this video bless you uh we're thinking about it for a while how can we share this but we're hoping that you enjoyed it and maybe you have some questions for us if you have a lot of questions we might have to do another uh sit down video later yeah but uh we have a lot more videos coming up we're gonna we continue to try to do at least one video a week two if we can and remember to subscribe and share and like and all the good stuff we love you guys thanks so much god bless you [Music] you

Channel: Montana Haven - Alaska Edition

Views: 57,520

Keywords: Miller, Joas, Amish, Farm, Family, Homestead, Montana, Montana Homestead, Homesteading, Amish heritage, How are the Amish live, All about the Amish, Amish culture, The culture of the Amish, How do the Amish live, The beliefs of the Amish, Are Amish Christians, The faith of the Amish

Id: MV3xqQNvqNM

Length: 21min 44sec (1304 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 08 2021