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Last Updated on :
Saturday, November 22, 2014

 

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Contents|| Preface || 1 || 2 || 3 || 4 || 5 || 6 || 7 || 8 || 9 || 10 || Thanks || INDEX

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Brethren In Christ
BY ALAN EYR


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Andrzej Wiszowaty 1608-1678

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PAGE 127

 

Wiszowaty came from a family of moderate means in Filipow, a small town not far from where Poland, Lithuania and Russia meet. He was Polish to the core, with a passionate love of his native land, surpassed only by an even greater love of Zion.

PAGE 128

He was highly educated, eloquent, a skilful debater, a tireless writer and editor, although severely handicapped by weak eyesight. One who was close to him wrote: "He worshipped God the Father after the manner which has been called heresy. Embracing the religion that he considered true, his whole life was lived under suffering and persecution. Placing his firm trust in God's Promises, he constantly held unshaken hope of future blessedness."

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A pillar of the Polish ecclesias during their greatest time of affliction -- the period following King Jan Casimir's fateful decree of 1658 -- he bravely and willingly took on the onerous task of leading the Roznow debate. Immediately afterwards he was forced to flee his native land. Going first to Transylvania, he quite successfully struggled to learn the difficult Magyar language, although he was already fifty-two years of age. Within a couple of years, he had to move again, this time to the Netherlands.

There, in Amsterdam, he worked zealously to aid his fellowbelievers, by that time scattered all over Europe. In 1678, ''his poor body worn out with cares and troubles'', but "his mind and memory unimpaired, and to the very end possessed of an assured hope, he completed the days of his pilgrimage'' and was laid to rest in an exile's grave.

 

 


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