Barbara Heinemann Landmann - Werkzeuge Convey The Word of The Lord.

Werkzeuge Convey The Word of The Lord.

Sources for the history of the Community of True Inspiration include Noé (1904), Perkins (1891), and Shambaugh (1908).

The Community had been founded 103 years earlier, in 1714, by Eberhard Ludwig Gruber, a Lutheran minister, and Johann Friedrich Rock, the son of a Lutheran minister.

Both had longed for a more personal involvement with the Lord. Together they had studied the writings of the German Mystics and Pietists from the 16th and 17th centuries. They were particularly drawn to a branch of Pietists which arose during the last quarter of the 17th century and whose followers are said to have "prophesied like the prophets of old."

Gruber and Rock believed in present-day Inspiration. In the Community they founded, divine guidance comes through individuals who are endowed by the Lord with the miraculous gift of Inspiration. These individuals are called Werkzeuge (Instruments). The testimony of a Werkzeug is often written down by a Scribe. Testimonies so recorded have the same authority and almost the same importance as the Bible.

Gruber and Rock, with other early members of the Community, traveled through Europe, testifying as they were directed by the Lord. Some villages welcomed them; there they established small congregations of Inspirationists. Other villages turned them away. One such rejection occurred in Zurich.

In 1717 Johann Adam Gruber and H. S. Gleim went into a church at Zürich and preached to the people. This bold step so enraged the clergyman, who feared that the members would leave the church in which he labored, and go over to the Inspirationists, that he caused them to be arrested. . . . They were first put in the pillory where they were exposed to the cutting comments of the mob. They were then driven through the streets, each prisoner receiving sixty-two lashes; the blood from their backs ran down the streets of Zürich, but still the stern clergy and thousands of spectators followed the procession, and cheered in derision whenever the prisoners groaned from the pain inflicted by the lash. (Perkins, 1891)