A Pocket Pastor YouTube lecture (Adam Ramdin) explaining how the Waldensians fled persecution into mountain valleys and established schools (e.g., the College of the Baths) to train missionaries and teach the Bible. The talk describes Bible-copying and memorization practices, clandestine distribution methods (hiding pages in coats), and how students were sent as undercover missionaries to universities and trades across many European countries; the speaker concludes by urging modern listeners to view their workplaces as mission fields.
Chapters
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, spread all over the valleys, where they would teach and train their young people to be missionaries throughout Europe.
Here in the College of the Baths is a Bible copy table, a place where the students would have painstakingly, by hand, written the Bible out from beginning. You see, the Bible was very important to the Waldensians. They had it in their own language. It formed a basis for congregational worship. There was also societies of young people that would meet together and would commit large parts of the Bible to memory.
After studying here in the colleges in the valleys, the students would be sent out to, 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, 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 craftsmen or traveling artisans and tradesmen. And they would also take the Bible with them, and they would move and travel through 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 coat 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 may be 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.
