Historical
Fiction
Historical
Fiction
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Several attempts at online, interactive fiction on Compuserve. This is a large set of abstracts from one of my story contributions. |
On the home page I provide links to one of my contributions to two stories I started.
Here is another link, this one to the correspondence from Muenster that finishes the real life story behind the propaganda piece found below:
The Saga of Jacob and Matilde
A Tract Written to Inspire True Believers Everywhere to Join the Elect in the New Jerusalem at Muenster, Germany, to Await the Coming of Our Lord.
Written and Sent to All the World in November 1534.
PART FIRST: From Catholic Citizen to Heretical Outlaw
We are Jacob, son of Hendrik, and Matilde, daughter of Gees. Because my husband Jacob is such a busy man, I will take it upon myself to communicate our inspiring life story to you. Jacob is proofreading and commenting on my writing, however, and will be available to answer your questions after you have surveyed our wondrous and eventful lives. After you read our story with an open mind and heart, you will sacrifice all that is necessary to join us in awaiting the coming of our Lord with us, but I am getting ahead of this most faith promoting story that our lives have become.
We were both born in Amsterdam in 1514, lived on the same street, knew each other all our lives, and were married in the Year of Our Lord 1534. Our two sets of parents were best friends, married the same year, and spoke of our union as soon as we were born. But, and this is the saga whereof we would like to speak, the year before we were married, the times in which we lived encroached upon our lives in a most fearful and wondrous way.
As lukewarm Catholics, we were not particularly familiar with the exact nature of the religious upheavals that were shaking our city and nation. We knew nothing of the faraway events that led to the Lutheran Reformation in Germany and the Zwinglian Reformation in Switzerland. We were much amused by, and ashamed of the citizens of our city who participated in what was labeled as a series of revolts against the civil and religious authority structures that all of us had always assumed deserving of respect. For some, it was apparently a time of great anxiety and uncertainty, a time that led to introspection and a search for fundamental moorings.
One such anxious person happened to be a friend of both our fathers. He was forever diligently searching the scriptures, and speaking of the pattern of the primitive church that was plainly visible in the Bible. He predicted, in hushed tones, that a "Restitution" was to come, in our lifetimes. Neither we nor our parents took him too seriously. We trusted that our Catholic faith, such as it was, was sufficient to meet all requirements for entering a nice place in the afterlife.
We were shocked at the temerity of our parents' friend's declaring one day that our baptisms were null and void in the eyes of God. He said the enemies of truth derisively called him an Anabaptist, a rebaptizer, because of his insistence on baptizing only those who were capable of belief: adults. Our parents' friend lived a life of exemplary and strict morality, he abstained from alcoholic beverages, and was dedicated to living in daily imitation of Christ. We tolerated his impassioned speeches, but we were inspired by the type of life he lived and joked that if he were a Catholic he might some day be sainted! We were shocked, therefore, that one day he was arrested for crimes against the state.
What apparently got him in trouble was a public speech, in the neighborhood square, in broad daylight, wherein he called his hearers to holiness. He supposedly insisted that only the saintly can truly be the church, and said very clearly that the Reformed and the Catholic churches were of the world, and were impotent in terms of administering salvation. We heard from his friends, whom we came to know later, that he continued by saying that it is from the world that the saint must withdraw, to the point of not having anything to do with the civil government, carrying no weapons in its behalf and taking no oath at its request. He claimed that only by following this path could one be saved.
He was arrested by the town watch and brought before a magistrate to whom he testified boldly of his beliefs. He told the magistrate that he, the magistrate, had no real authority to judge him, because the city government was not the government of God under whose laws he chose to live. The magistrate had a sense of humor and decided not to punish him severely, given that he had been a productive and law abiding citizen all his life. He assigned him to four weeks of manual labor.
It was probably a mistake on the part of his guards, but at one point when he boldly testified to his fellow prisoners of their need for rebaptism as believers, he was set upside down into a barrel filled with icy cold rain water. Witnesses say he was not in there awfully long, but for some reason he fell over dead toward the end of his day working in his wet clothing. Witnesses say he shivered almost uncontrollable in the cold, wet wind, as he shoveled silt out of a canal. At a given point he grabbed his chest and exclaimed, as he looked heavenward and collapsed into the muddy water beside him, "take me into thy bosom, Lord Jesus!" When guards and fellow prisoners lifted him up, he was obviously dead.
We heard later that so many prisoners had been converted that they overpowered their guards without either killing them or taking their weapons, and they disappeared into the city. Few were found again. Most of the guards, it has been asserted, also believed on the word of their late prisoner.
The Catholics of our neighborhood were aghast at the news of someone within their own community having been found out to be a criminal. They had heard that this evil Anabaptist lay preacher had been punished with death by God for blasphemy. They were fearful that people of this ilk were sneaking into their community and converting previously Catholic people. In other places, it was suggested, all who were converted became missionaries themselves and created a false spiritual epidemic.
It was rumored that the government was going to take strong measures, that these Anabaptists were to be savagely hunted and dispatched to their eternal rewards. It was fitting that they should be drowned, it was said, since they so blasphemously held that adults had to be rebaptized, by immersion, to be saved.
Our local priest came to our parents' houses and attempted to find out what we thought of our former friend. Our parents acknowledged having heard him preach, but said they had not been persuaded. The priest indicated that that was good, because a long list of the man's crimes was being compiled by reliable neighborhood witnesses. He was an immoral, violent and evil man, and pretended to an air of holiness so as to deceive, said the priest. Our parents were so upset with these obviously false allegations that they vowed never to set foot in church again.
Soon after, they received visits from their former friends' friends, and although they did not convert to their beliefs, they fed and temporarily housed some of them who were hiding from the local constabulary. When these people left, they were headed east to become part of the New Jerusalem that God had appointed. They were to be the ones, a few years hence, who would meet the Christ at his triumphant second coming. Then would they be delivered and their enemies would suffer the consequences of having rebelled against God.
We were worried about our parents' activities, and pleaded with them to cease aiding these good people, because they were in actuality considered to be criminals. Our fears were proved to have had a basis: both our fathers were jailed for their activities. When they came out of their confinements, their jobs had been taken away from them, we ran out of food and money to pay rents, and the neighborhood despised us and gave us no aid. It became apparent that we could no longer stay in the neighborhood, on the street of our birth. We were reduced to beggary within a few weeks, and quickly found out we could get no alms from our old friends and neighbors or even from anyone within an hours' walk in any direction from our old neighborhood.
Only those who had no idea about what reduced us to these circumstances gave us food or small coins. We migrated slowly south, begging as we went, hoping to make a new start in the land around Utrecht where both our parents had distant relatives who would , no doubt, share with us temporarily. Late the fifth night, as we huddled together for warmth, we were approached by a pair of Anabaptists who declared they had been looking for us. They had heard of our story from a sympathetic neighbor, and came to offer us temporal as well as eternal salvation.
As they spread before us a feast of dried meats, cheese and bread, milk and fresh water, they proceeded to explain to us that God had found it necessary to take away all our material riches from us because they stood in the way of our recognizing our dependence upon Him. Now we were literally being fed by the hand of God, and this misfortune was brought upon us through our own charitable acts, through our listening to the still, small voice of the spirit within our hearts that told us what was the right thing to do. But, because of our relatively affluent situation, and because of our fear of losing that affluence, we were keeping ourselves from fully living up to all that that little voice was attempting to tell us. But now, God had intervened to remove that fear, and we were therefore free to accept what we already knew to be true.
Much to our surprise, both sets of parents burst into tears and confessed that all that was said to them was true. They asked to be taught properly and to be baptized to wash away their sins. They cried because they felt it was a wondrous thing to be so obviously and directly singled out for salvation by God. What that meant, no doubt, was that we, their children, were destined to be among the throng of the righteous that would welcome Him back to His own, rebellious Creation.
We had never seen our parents like this before, so overcome by emotion. We had never heard our parents speak of spiritual things before, let alone them testifying of knowing they had been led to the path of salvation through a miraculous act of God. They proclaimed that, in gratitude, they would now set their foot firmly on the road to salvation and never look back. We young adults were both, separately and together, convinced that a miracle was in progress, and without coaching each other we spontaneously announced our intent to also take upon us the name of Christ through baptism as adult believers. Tears flowed freely among all present, and we were told that shelter would be provided for us, we would be properly taught, and then the great day of our baptism would come.
That night we were escorted to a nearby farm, where we found warm and dry accommodations in a large barn with hidden apartments. As we settled down on our piles of dry straw, warm and well fed for the first time in days, we had some silent moments. The next day over a hearty breakfast it came out that each of us had individually grappled with the notion that we were now about to become heretics and outlaws. We were heartened by finding out that after a period of fear and internal struggle, each of us had been supernaturally granted peace: each of us had received the clear impression that we were called to Heaven, but that our paths would lead us past the very gates of hell. Our hosts pronounced these impressions the greatest outpouring of the Spirit that they had been privileged to be witness to in the years they had been true believers.
We, they said, were chosen by God to do a great work in these final days of the world.
PART SECOND: Entering the Kingdom of God
Every day for two weeks we received visits from the two men who rescued us from our destitute situation. They taught us that baptism shall be given to all who have learned repentance and amendment of life, and who believe truly that their sins are taken away in Christ. They taught us that infant baptism is the highest and chief abomination of the pope, but that since it was a clear contradiction of the Bible, it was also the key to the conversion of multitudes.
During these discussions we had more tears shed by all as our hostess confessed that she was converted when her priest declared their child, who died a week after birth, forever unsaved because it had not been brought to him for baptism immediately after birth. She declared that a window opened in her dark and grieving mind, she looked out and there in a sunny vale, surrounded by angelic playmates, was a happy youth she recognized as her child. She walked away smiling, and soon ran into a person who knew the truth and taught her.
We were taught that all those who wish to break one bread in remembrance of the broken body of Christ, and who wish to drink of one drink as remembrance of the shed blood of Christ, shall be united beforehand by baptism into one body of Christ which is the Church of God and whose Head is Christ. We were told that a separation shall be made from the evil and from the wickedness the Devil planted in the world; we do not have fellowship with them and do not run with them in the multitude of their abominations. To us the command of the Lord is clear when He calls upon us to be separate from the evil and thus He will be our God and we shall be His sons and daughters. He further admonishes us to withdraw from Babylon and the earthly Egypt that we may not be partakers of the pain and suffering which the Lord will bring upon them.
We are not to possess, let alone use, the unchristian devilish weapons of force - such as sword, armor and the like, and all their uses either for friends or against one's enemies. The sword punishes and puts to death the wicked, and is ordained to be used by the worldly magistrates. In the perfection of Christ, however, only the ban is used for a warning and for the excommunication of the one who has sinned. Discussion around this last point included the idea that the believer can not resist evil with the sword even in defense of self, can not be a magistrate, and can not swear oaths of any kind, since the Lord taught "Let your communication be Yea, yea; Nay, nay, for whatsoever is more than those cometh of evil."
In addition, we were taught about the need to rely on the Spirit, individually, in making life's choices. As a community, we were taught the idea of having goods in common and providing for the common welfare. We suggested we were ready for baptism, and were cautioned that baptism was not a step to be lightly taken. It was explained that there was a rule of observation of new members prior to baptism, and that we were being carefully watched in terms of our discussions and demeanor. This was to protect the community from those who would steal into its midst maliciously to do it harm, or it was to protect the less mature potential member from thinking themselves ready to live the difficult life to which they were being called.
We were taught the absolute necessity of keeping membership information in strictest confidence. Many were to be martyred in these last days, but it should not be because another member of the body of Christ could not keep a confidence. We were admonished to be prepared for the Lord's coming, and were bathed daily in the wondrous truths of the scriptures. The words of the scriptures had never before had such meaning: we saw and felt and tasted their meaning now, and looked forward to the day we would become true members of the body of Christ, one with the saintly persons who taught and succored us so lovingly each and every day we were being taught.
Finally, we went down to the local canal at nightfall and, dressed in white, were taken into the cold water one by one and baptized as Jesus was at the hands of John the Baptist so long ago. We shivered bodily but burned spiritually as the brethren afterward sincerely asked God for grace, that He might reveal His divine will to us and help us to note it. We were welcomed into the fold, and reminded that every brother or sister shall yield himself to God in the brotherhood completely with body and life, and hold in common all gifts received of God and contribute to the common need so that brethren and sisters will be helped.
As it was reiterated that needy members shall receive from the brotherhood as among the Christians at the time of the apostles, we again melted in tears and confessed that we had truly sensed having been in the society of the apostles at this blessed farmhouse. After we were dry and warm in the house a few final words were spoken by our kindly teachers and hosts. We learned that water is an earthly witness to our decision to become part of the household of God. We, who have believed and are now baptized in the promise and forgiveness of sin, are children by faith and accepted in the Kingdom of Christ.
As true believers we are preserved, ruled, and led by the Spirit of God, without any human help and aid. We are those whom the Spirit of God directs. We are children of God, companions in Christ's sufferings, heirs in the Kingdom of God. Wonderful, inspired words were spoken about our being among the children of God in the Kingdom of Christ who have the power to loose on earth that which is loosed in heaven and, what we bind on earth is bound in heaven. The plan by which we now live is controlled by the Holy Spirit, according to the love of God, outwardly symbolized by the Holy Supper of Christ. As we obey love in the Holy Spirit, we will always eat and drink worthily at the table of the Lord.
Every tenet of the faith explained to us was in part directed at a contrary teaching in our former church. We were now full fledged heretics, and enemies of the state as well. The established churches taught that the social and the religious order must be unified in order to ensure a Christian society acceptable to God; we were taught, instead, that there should be a radical separation of the saints and the world. As we were to find out as we moved east to help establish the New Jerusalem in western Germany, the world included both the Catholic and Lutheran churches. In both the Catholic and the Lutheran territories there was a stringent and often bloody effort to destroy our movement. This was ostensibly to save the souls of these heretics and preserve society. The truth was, however, that Satan's power and authority in the Earth was threatened by our bringing forth Christ's true Kingdom in these latter days.
But we are getting ahead of our story, moving past our own days of Pentecost into our days of tribulation.
PART THIRD: The Two are One in the Lord, in the New Jerusalem!
Our newfound peace in the bosom of the Kingdom of God was soon shattered by rumors of arrests of fellow Anabaptists that seemed to come closer and closer. Our hosts spoke of the Spirit's promptings to their hearts: soon they would leave all they had worked for all their lives and join the throngs that, in this last day, would inhabit the New Jerusalem where the people would be prepared to meet the Lord. They spoke of the prophet who had visited them and who had preached to them in this very home, a man named Melchior Hoffman, the Lords' apostle to the northern Netherlands, who had converted phenomenal numbers, setting leaders such as our hosts over the branches that were established in many cities.
According to our hosts, Hoffman was the true Elijah, who is to come before the judgment of Christ, and he had said Strassburg was the city that God had chosen above all other cities. Strassburg's city fathers had not taken kindly to being so singularly honored, and Hoffman was often in jail. Hoffman disavowed violence, telling the Strassburg city fathers that prior to Christ's glorious return the city would be besieged, and the Anabaptists would work to build fortifications and trenches, but would not carry swords.
Our hosts' friends began to disappear from the farm, either because of a voluntary journey to the New Jerusalem or because of being dispatched to the Kingdom of God by sword or water. All of us worked very hard every day of our stay in this friendly place to stockpile provisions and outfit those who came in the middle of the night needing supplies to keep them on their journeys. Our hosts said that as soon as the rate of migration slowed to a trickle, they would themselves, with us, join the movement to the holy city. The Spirit would let them know when they should go. Their absolute conviction and faith were a constant inspiration to all who came and went.
Among the prominent men who visited our hosts were such notable apostles as Jan Matthijsz. John Matthijsz humbly asserted to us that he had experienced the new outpouring of the Holy Ghost predicted by Hoffman, and that he had received revelations from God designating himself Enoch, the second witness mentioned in the Book of Revelation. He taught that God desired to have his people be the elect, sealed with the sign of baptism to preserve them from the evil that was to come. One who listened and believed and was baptized by Matthijsz in the very place where we tarried in service to the Kingdom, was Jan Bockelsen, who later became well known as Jan van Leiden.
Jan van Leiden showed such an obvious spiritual strength that even in these rough times, Matthijsz sent him out as an apostolic messenger to the cities of Holland, where, with my (Matilde's) father as his companion, he established many small branches of eight to ten people each. We hosted, fed and supplied many of these converts as they fled persecution and certain death. They spoke with awe of the missionary pair that had brought them into the true faith, and our hearts were made glad.
My (Matilde's) father told the story, upon his return, of when in Amsterdam Matthijsz joined them and they had met with one who had challenged Matthijsz, in Amsterdam, claiming to be the true new Enoch. This man, in front of his followers, was cursed into the devil's eternal care by the power of the Holy Ghost, Matthijsz declaring his words with sufficient true authority that those addressed reportedly became sick to their stomachs. Then Matthijsz became as a little child and extended the hand of fellowship and love to these who had followed the devil's promptings. To a man they repented and tearfully acknowledged they had been misled. In turn, these able men acknowledged Matthijsz leader of the elect in the Netherlands, and heroically undertook dangerous missions under his direction.
These missionaries were meeting with great success, and many were designated apostolic messengers: they were filled with the same Spirit and had the same authority as the New Testament apostles. One of them prophesied that no more Christian blood would be spilt, and that the Lord would shortly wipe all tyranny from the earth. Many were baptized at this good news, which was interpreted as a restatement of a prediction by Hoffman that the twelve messengers sent in these last days would be protected. But the prophecy turned out to be either false or understood too literally, persecution was stepped up and deaths by tortures of all types increased horrendously.
This led to a renewed effort to establish the New Jerusalem as a place for the true believers to be gathered, where they could live in safety. In the spring of 1534, four apostolic missionaries, including Jan van Leiden and my (Matilde's) father, entered Muenster, Westphalia, and found themselves welcomed by phenomenal successes, including baptismal requests by leading citizens such as Bernard Rothmann and a number of Reformed preachers. Bernard Rothmann was chosen by God to write that which would explain the beliefs of God's true Kingdom to the world.
As the New Jerusalem was now designated to be Muenster, not the Strassburg that had imprisoned God's chosen messenger, revelations concerning the nature of the new Kingdom of God began to pour into the hearts of the apostolic leaders. Jan van Leiden and his companion taught in the name of the new Enoch that it was allowable for a Christian to use the sword against Godless authorities. A two-edged sword of a world mission by the apostolic messengers and an overthrow of Godless authority was now unsheathed as the means for changing the world in preparation for Christ's return in glory.
Muenster was the New Jerusalem, in which all would be restored as in ancient times. My father, upon seeing that the Kingdom of God had truly been reestablished on Earth, was desirous for his family to join him. Within weeks, our hosts had outfitted us as if we were royalty, and we made our way uneventfully to the New Jerusalem where God's ways were rapidly becoming man's ways. We were assigned housing, given food and fuel from the storehouses of the Kingdom, and brought as a group into the presence of the apostle and prophet Jan van Leiden.
He immediately discerned that his missionary companion's family was one chosen by God to do a mighty work in preparing the world for Christ's triumphant return. He admonished us, meaning Jacob and I, to marry immediately: it was the will of God! We felt our hearts leap within us, as our inmost soul responded to the somehow familiar voice and will of God. That weekend we were among a group of refugees and local converts married by the apostolic authority restored to the Earth in these last days in the New Jerusalem. We two as well as our parents, were, during the outdoor marriage ceremony in the warm autumn sun of a September day in 1834, fully aware that we were going to be in this exact place, in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ, in the near future.
We were so happy!
PART FOURTH: The Society of Abraham, Friend of God.
In the New Jerusalem, our leadership attempted to restore the society that God had established in the beginning of time, which Satan had corrupted as he gained power over the hearts of men. Our acknowledged prophet, Jan Matthijsz, was killed in a military sortie against besieging forces of Catholics and Lutherans soon after we settled into the city. Unbeknownst to most of us, the prophet Matthijsz had set an example of living in imitation of the patriarch Abraham, who was a friend of God and who walked and talked with Him as two mortal men walk and talk with each other.
He had, in imitation of Abraham, taking a younger woman as a spiritual sister-wife, in addition to his aging wife. In this same spirit, and because the marriages performed by Satan's minions were of no effect in the eyes of God, the prophet Jan van Leiden left his unbelieving wife in Leiden, and when he came to the New Jerusalem married another woman without benefit of divorce. These things were shocking to the world, but were in accordance with the word of God and commanded again in these last days as a way of extending God's blessings to the many women of the New Jerusalem who were without the protection of a husband to watch over their spiritual welfare and care for their material needs.
In an assembly shortly after Jan Matthijsz was killed, a prophet in the city declared it God's will that Jan van Leiden be the new prophet and King of the New Zion in the New Jerusalem. He was acknowledged to be the second David, and would eventually be acknowledged as King over the whole world, under Christ. When the prophet John Matthijsz died and his beautiful wife Divara, one of my closest friends, became a widow, the new prophet declared it God's will, by revelation, that polygamy be not only practiced but that it be mandatory, and that all women must marry. He married Divara and others besides for a total of fifteen.
Lest it be thought that there is anything untoward or unseemly in these developments, let it be known that God saw fit to institute this practice because so many men fled the city in fear of the Kingdom of God, leaving their poor wives behind to guard their property and interests. Such cowardice speaks volumes to their evil natures. Their wives, however, aware of the duplicitous way they had been treated by their husbands, freely inquired as to the nature of the faith that now transformed their world.
They were, for the most part, positively impressed with there being no rich and no poor among them any longer. The high and mighty had been brought low, and their surplus was being distributed to such as were in need. Many, if not most of them, were taught and baptized. They clamored for the protection of a worthy, faithful man, as was told them was the promise of God's new Kingdom.
As it turned out, God had prepared for them a way that their hearts' desire could be granted. We were present when, in our home in conversation with my father, the prophet Jan van Leiden spoke of the revelation of God establishing this kind practice again among the children of men. He spoke of having received a vision for himself. Prior to his best friend and fellow prophet Jan Matthijsz's death he saw him in vision thrust through with a lance. He was very frightened because of this, but then he heard a voice saying: "Peace be unto you. That which I would have brought to pass through Jan Matthijzs, that shall you now accomplish and Johan Matthijsz's wife shall you take in marriage." Then he was even more frightened and let one of his friends know about this, and then said: "Now let us see, if this vision shall be true and if such shall occur."
Within eight days was Johan thrust through by an enemy lance. The people would that one under them would rise up who would provide for and rule over them. Jan van Leiden confessed in our presence that with great heaviness of heart the testimony came to him that he was to be king over this people. His spirit urged him to read through the scriptures. Without premeditation he opened his Bible to the page that said: "I will raise up my servant David in the last days," etc., which burdened him more. He begged the Lord to let it be so that this would not come to pass except it be prophesied through another, for he dared not say this of himself or seem so boastful. He also had doubts arise, and asked God that he might know surely if this vision were true or untrue. This he then kept to himself and told no one.
Shortly thereafter Johan Dusentschuir [another prophet among us, we have many prophets since the gift of prophecy is given to all true believers] stood up before the community and said how one, called Johan van Leiden, shall be our king and ruler over us.
Jan was greatly relieved at hearing this, and thankfully and prayerfully accepted his assignment, given him of God as well as by the people.
PART FIFTH: A Plea: Join Us in Awaiting the Coming of the Lord!
In our effort to save as many as we possibly could from the terrible fate awaiting them if they are in a state of unbelief when Christ comes in His glory, our friend Bernard Rothmann published a number of tracts for our missionaries to distribute among the people outside our Divinely fortified city walls. His greatest tract proudly announced the "Restitution of the True and Whole Christian Doctrine." It was published in October 1534, just a month after our marriage.
The tract shows that the Catholic church has destroyed original Christianity, and God has used the learned Erasmus, Luther and Zwingli to begin the restoration. But the restoration is being brought to its wonderful conclusion, truth is being restored, by the unlearned Melchior Hoffman, Jan Matthijsz, and our brother Jan van Leiden.
Rothmann's tract explains the scriptures and how they should be truly understood, and then how the Old Testament underlies the New, explaining that the world has misinterpreted scripture in its belief that Christ has taken on the flesh through Mary. A literal yet mystical belief in the scriptural words: 'The word is become flesh' is explained as it was revealed to the world by our beloved Melchior Hoffman, who rots in a Strassburg jail to this day. Our understanding of the message of God is in harmony with Hoffman's vision of the true Christianity.
We believe in 1) The universality of God's grace/mercy, 2) The freedom of the human will after its enlightenment, 3) Two judgments, one where the mercy of God pardons, and the second, final judgment in which persons are tried on their own merits, 4) Conceiving life as a process that has three stages, and that the outcome of a successful journey leads one to become a partaker of the Divine Nature, and 5) The unforgivable sin being that which is committed in the full awareness of the wrongfulness of the act.
The true Gospel leads to becoming the brother of and fellow-heir with Christ. The Gospel is to repent and remorsefully ask Christ for forgiveness, to be baptized and wash one's sins away in Christ. Then are you a member of the community of Christ, and if you will endure to the end in full obedience, seeking after justice and holiness, you shall be saved in bliss.
Believer's baptism is necessary for entry into the Kingdom, and there is a need for both true faith and works. We must walk in holiness in God's commandments. The true community of Christians depends for its existence on the motivation of the members of the community being Godly love for one another and not the seeking after riches and worldly delights. We would rather die than have to return to the world and its ways.
As part of our taking care of each other, our daily common meal is a time at which bread and other foods are shared, and at which Christ's last supper is recounted as a devotional. Then the whole community prays for their needs and gives thanks. It is a feast of love in which each waits upon the other.
The Kingdom of God physically located on earth is announced by us, which restores the Kingdom and Seat of David, and which will be fully established and will spread after it is cleansed by the sword of truth and justice.
PART SIXTH: True Christian Marriage in the Kingdom of God
One of the surest proofs of our being the true Kingdom of God, and worthy of your making every sacrifice to join us, is the fact that we have restored, by Divine decree, true Christian marriage among us. True Christian marriage consists of a man and woman coming together for the purpose of having children who will praise God in eternity. All uses of the marriage relation, other than seeking to bring forth children, is unlawful.
The place of the man in true Christian marriage, according to Rothmann, is lordly. Also, as has been mentioned, he may take under his protective care more than one wife. As our friend Bernard explains: "Therefore when a man is so plentifully blessed of God to have impregnated one wife, and he therefore, in consideration of God's commandments, dares not misuse such a blessing, he is thus free, yes even advised, to take more fruitful women in marriage; rather than outside marriage, which is called something else than being within God's will and law, to know a woman outside marriage, is adultery and whoremongering."
For those of you surprised at this lofty notion, our friend Bernard Rothmann shows from the Old Testament that this is a scriptural practice, naming the patriarchs. He uses the New Testament as well, asserting that the statement saying a bishop should be the husband of one wife suggests a polygamous society. The argument is obvious, else why specify "one?" The word of scripture teaches us that this is from God, and our prophets have reiterated that to us.
However, let it be said here and now that the main purpose for which this practice was restored to us is to provide for unmarried women and married women in our city who have been abandoned by their husbands. As it says in our written law which commands our women to select men who will be their guardians and providers: "Every unmarried woman, or those who have not their regular husbands, shall be authorized to choose a guardian or protector from the congregation of Christ."
Our friend Rothmann explains this new marriage arrangement: "Not that she can be used as married without receiving the man's name in marriage, [but] so that she can call in an orderly way upon his leadership and protection, so that all things spoken of by the prophets may be restored in their true form." As our prophet Jan has spoken and written: "The voice of the living God has instructed me that this is a command of the All-Highest: The men shall demand a confession of faith, as well from their legal wives as from those whom they are charged to guard and protect ... a confession of faith of the marriage-union in the New Kingdom - why and to what purpose they were baptized. They shall show and disclose all this to their husbands."
Let it be said in truth that we enforce the death penalty for adultery, for men as well as women, and excommunication and delivery to Satan, for the destruction of the flesh, for those who lust and commit adultery in their hearts.
What happened to those women who, out of the blindness of their hearts, did not allow their husbands to obey the word of the Lord and take more wives under their protection? They were brought into the Rosental cloister and exhorted by myself and others of the women, including my friend Divara, and by men who were sufficiently well versed in the beliefs of the Kingdom to persuasively answer questions and concerns. They remained in the cloister until they repented.
It has been reported by our enemies that those who remained obstinate were beheaded. I know of no such executions, and I am here. But we did let the women know that going against their husbands was akin to going against Christ, and would result in much severer penalties in the eternities than having their lives cut short by a merciful, swift blow of a sword in this life. We were strict in enforcing God's laws, but we were not cruel as were our pious persecutors who blasphemously torture in the sacred name of Christ.
We taught the truth, that the restoration of "true Christian marriage" demands the restoration of the subordinate place of woman in marriage. As expertly described by our friend and colleague Bernard Rothmann: "the man is the head of the woman, so as the woman is to honor the man, and so as now the man must in good order be obedient and submissive to Christ, so the woman her man, and that without grumbling and back talking everything as if they were the masters, but as the man must have his eyes centered on Christ, so the women their masters. So has God now restored the lofty freedom of marriage by us, so has he now by us placed all women in obedience to the men, that all of them, young or old, can let themselves be ruled by God's word through men."
Jan van Leiden has properly implemented the laws of God. This means that those who break the more serious laws and commandments were punished with the sword, and this happened to some housewives. This in no way implies that women not willing to have their husbands care for additional wives were executed, however. Crimes against the Kingdom that received the penalty of being sent to a higher court for eternal judgement included serious offenses such as stealing or hoarding life-supporting provisions, or signaling the enemy outside the gates regarding potential weaknesses. We are a fair and a just people, awaiting deliverance at the hand of God as Stan and his fiends rage outside the walls of our city.
God will appear in glory and smite our enemies just as the arch fiend's forces break the walls and force us into one last stand in the now fortified square where Jacob and I were married. That is what we saw and heard in our hearts that fateful day when we became One in Christ as husband and wife. That is what we know and believe.
You know, by the time you finish
this account of our lives, that we are right and that God is with us. Come
join us, and be saved now and forever!