Beukelszoon Jan - New Jerusalem

You are the last of Gods children in a godless world.

Melchior Hoffman, to his followers in Strasbourg

He went happily to prison, the self-proclaimed prophet they arrested one fine spring day in Strasbourg in 1533. On the way to the cells he threw away his hat, tore off his shoes and cut his hose at the ankles, easing the job of the guards. He wouldve worn sackcloth had he had a sack, as befitted an Old Testament visionary. His name was Melchior Hoffman, and he was an itinerant preacher and furrier from Swabia. When Melchior saw that he was going to prison, said a witness, he thanked God that the hour had come and he extended his fingers to heaven.

Hoffmans followers thought of him as Elijah, the Biblical prophet whose incarnation he claimed to be. The prisoner swore by God that he would live on bread and water until the One a descending angel, an emissary of the Almighty arrived to fulfil a prophecy that Jesus Christ would return and free him within six months, in time to witness the coming of the Apocalypse.

The Strasbourg councillors knew him well. Hoffman had first visited their city in 1529. Initially made welcome Strasbourg was a tolerant Lutheran town he had fled the following year, fearing arrest because of his conversion to a peculiar sect known as the rebaptisers, or Anabaptists. There was a limit to Alsatian tolerance.

Yet here he was again, four years later, unrepentant, spreading his heretical ideas and inflaming his little band of disciples, who went by the name of Melchiorites. This time the city councillors would make an example of their unwelcome guest. And this time they had a witness willing to testify against him.

While the burghers debated how best to proceed, Hoffman took to what he did so well: preaching. From his cell window in the prison tower, he addressed a crowd of followers who had gathered on the grass across the moat below.

Strasbourg is the New Jerusalem, Hoffman declared, the holy city of the Elect, and witness of the Apocalypse! Here, God would descend, with Christ on His right, to judge the world. But there was no need for fear, Hoffman assured his followers: they were living on holy ground, a sacred island in a sea of heresy. You are the last of Gods children in a godless world, he cried. As Christ has said, so the last will be first, and the first will be last.

That was the sweetest music to a poor and persecuted people who believed they were about to witness the Second Coming: the Almighty was returning to save His chosen tribe, the Melchiorites. They swooned and raised their eyes to Heaven as Hoffman cited a favourite passage from the Book of Revelation:

I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

See, the home of God is among mortals.

He will dwell with them;

they will be his peoples,

and God himself will be with them;

he will wipe every tear from their eyes.

Death will be no more;

mourning and crying and pain will be no more,

for the first things have passed away.

The faithless and the evil-doers, the Catholics and Lutherans, would be struck down, Hoffman cried. The Emperor, the Pope, Luther, their priests and whores, the liars and cheats, the sodomites, the greedy and profane, the rich who sucked on the blood of the poor all would suffer terrible persecution in the apocalyptic tumult.

There was a special place in Hell for the Pope, he continued. Rome had usurped Christs throne and perverted Gods Word. As St Paul had written to the Thessalonians, Christ would return when the lawless one who takes his seat in the temple of God, declaring himself to be God, was vanquished. The lawless one, Hoffman assured them, was the occupant of the Vatican, whom he damned as the Antichrist.

How will it end? the crowd implored him.

Two prophets would appear, Hoffman replied, dressed in sackcloth: the reincarnations of Elijah and Enoch. For 1260 days they will prophesise, as John the Divine told in Revelation.

But the Lords city will stand, Hoffman cried. And signs of the coming of the Son of Man will appear in the sky. And Rome and the false church will be destroyed. And the second phase of the Eschaton, Gods reign before the end of the world, will begin. Christ will return in His glory and unleash His fathers wrath against the godless and