modern peaceful Anabaptists are literally the direct theological and historical descendants of the exact group that produced Münster
David koresh was branch Davidian. The Branch Davidians were an apocalyptic offshoot of the Davidian Seventh-day Adventists. The Adventists came out if the Millerite great disappointment. Miller was a lay Baptist preacher. And the Baptist movement came out of the Church of England in 1609.
In contrast, the Münster rebels did not emerge in a vacuum; they were part of the Melchiorite stream of Anabaptism. Melchior Hoffman was an influential Anabaptist leader who introduced adult baptism to the Low Countries.
Hoffman preached an apocalyptic message that a “New Jerusalem” would be established.
When Hoffman was imprisoned, his direct followers—specifically Jan Matthys and Jan of Leyden—took his theology, radicalized it into violence, and declared the city of Münster to be that New Jerusalem.
The people who flooded into Münster to participate in the rebellion were existing Anabaptists from the surrounding regions of Germany and the Netherlands who shared the same core view on baptism.
the Münster rebels practiced adult believer’s baptism (re-baptism) and explicitly identified as part of the radical Reformation. It was their shared Anabaptist view on baptism and separation from the “corrupt world” that allowed the leaders to gather a following in the first place
Mennonites Simmons gathered the surviving Melchiorite Anabaptists—including many who had been sympathetic to or involved with the Münster movement—and explicitly steered them away from violence and polygamy. He re-grounded them in strict, absolute pacifism. Those survivors became the Mennonites. Therefore, modern peaceful Anabaptists are literally the direct theological and historical descendants of the exact group that produced Münster
If those Amish would only stop trying to take over America with their guns and violence…. /s