Barbara Heinemann Landmann - Bewegungen Accompany The Testimonies of The Werkzeuge.

Bewegungen Accompany The Testimonies of The Werkzeuge.

The miraculous gift of Inspiration, preached and demonstrated by the early Inspirationists, consists of testimony delivered during a trance or shaking spell called Bewegung.

Mackinet (1749), who traveled as a Scribe with Gruber and other early Werkzeuge, wrote that Bewegungen varied with the testimony. When Werkzeuge were proclaiming God's judgment and chastisement,

Their bearing was majestic, their Bewungen were strong, and their voices resounded like thunder. . . . However, when they spoke of God's love and the nobility of His children, the Bewegungen were mild and accompanied by a graceful demeanor. (Mackinet, 1749)

Mackinet goes into more detail about Bewegungen.

The Werkzeug or prophet first senses an innerly calming and beneficent passion which increases gradually and finally manifests itself throughout the entire body, consequently resulting in heavy breathing through the nose, trembling of the entire body and finally in powerful bodily movements, often accompanied by kicking movements of the legs and feet, clapping of the hands and shaking of the head. Through these Bewegungen the prophet is prepared or fitted to fearlessly proclaim the Lord's Word just as It is born within him. Sometimes It is issued syllable by syllable, sometimes word by word, often very slowly, other times very rapidly. The Werkzeug has no alternative for he submits to being a passive instrument in the hand of the Lord. (Mackinet, 1749)

Mackinet and Gruber, after a night of preaching in a synagogue in Prague, went for a walk on the frozen Moldau. There they met two Rabbis. They asked the Rabbis if the prophets of old among the people of Israel also proclaimed the Lord's Word through such strange bodily movements. The Rabbis answered:

The bodily movement is not considered strange to us, for this was a sure sign among the old prophets and whoever spoke without such bodily movements was not considered a true prophet. It is for this reason--in recognitions of the early prophets--that we always sway back and forth when we sing our Psalms. (Mackinet, 1749)

Bewegungen, whether a trance or a shaking fit, continued to distinguish the utterances of the Werkzeuge up through the time of Nordhoff's visit. Nordhoff says that Christian Metz, a Werkzeug who died seven years before Nordhoff's visit, once shook for an hour before an utterance.