My efforts at ecumenism to that point had been to try to seem more Protestant rather than to be who I am. Each needs some explanation. It's what the prophet was speaking about. So the right way to read prophecy is not just as historical record of the past, but as a disclosure of the meaning and significance of the present. It's information about what is of final importance here and now.
Eschatology is what comes last, but it is also what lasts, because it is enduring.
The thing that strikes me about the radical reformers is that they were so varied. There is no one person that baptists look to as their founder, no Luther or Calvin. For example, Menno Simons was indeed an important figure, but Mennonites would still be Mennonites without Menno. What they had in common was this baptist vision that shaped their lives and often caused their deaths, because they were a martyred people. Indeed they believed that the story of the cross is the story of every Christian's life.