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The year is 1530. Protestant thought sweeps like a tornado across a European terrain that has altered little for a thousand years. Caught in the storm, the influential town of Strasbourg (now in France) is gripped by the same fears rampaging through Germany and the Netherlands. The stage is set for revolution. Melchoir Hoffman, a furrier, mounts the pulpit to preach another of his fiery apocalyptic sermons. The New Revelation is about to be unleashed.

Earlier that year, the popular preacher had spontaneously started rebaptizing adults. His independent thinking had gone far beyond anything Martin Luther envisioned, but it quickly gathered a large following in the low countries.

While historians have difficulty pinpointing the origins of the Anabaptist movement because of its simultaneous emergence in several places, most agree Melchoir Hoffman's preaching was the most significant factor in launching the radical wing of the Reformation. His emphasis on a literal millennial reign of Jesus Christ on earth gripped the imagination of the Anabaptist movement.

Lutherans, Calvinists, and Anglican Reformers rejected millennialism as "ignorant" and "malicious" speculation. The Thirty Nine Articles, the Augsburg Confession, and the Westminster Confession avoided any notion of a literal, thousand-year reign of Christ. However, such was not the case in Strasbourg, where Hoffman's imagination had been taken captive by Revelation's twentieth chapter and the expectation of a literal, imminent coming of the physical Kingdom of God.

With all the fire and fury of a frontier revival preacher, Hoffman proclaimed his inspired images and visions. The congregation already knew an age was ending; he convinced them The End was at hand. Hoffman's personal charismatic aura made him an indomitable force. The apex of his innovative claims was that God had chosen Strasbourg as the "New Jerusalem."

After three years of apocalyptic messages pouring forth weekly from Hoffman's church, local authorities had enough. Perceiving him a social threat even though he never advocated violence in establishing the new order, they imprisoned Hoffman. The town jail could hold the man, but not his ideas. Melchiorites were springing up everywhere.

The New Revelation soon echoed down the Dutch streets of Haarlem and found a welcome in the bakery of Jan Matthys. Matthys was undistinguished by training, but Luther had taught that with Scripture alone, his conscience and insights were as good as anyone's. Having digested Hoffman's sermons, the baker believed himself to be supremely qualified to preach. Perceiving himself to be especially endowed with the Holy Spirit, he was now the heir to all Melchoir Hoffman promised.

Matthys proclaimed he was none other than Enoch, the second witness of the Book of Revelation. With a flowing black beard, the tall, gaunt figure was now the bearer of prophetic authority. Doubters were confronted with threats and intimidation. Those failing to embrace the second Enoch would be cast into hell with the devil and his angels. The baker knew how to turn up the heat.

Matthys's band of followers fanned out in pairs across the low countries, just as Christ dispatched his disciples. Two of them, Jan van Leyden and Gerard Boekbinder, went to Münster, Germany. There they discovered the town's leading preacher, Bernhard Rothman, preaching similar Anabaptist ideas (like re-baptism) to large crowds.

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