1527 was a glorious year for the Anabaptists in Europe. On February 8, George Wagner was executed by fire in Munich for saying that baptism did not save souls. The same was true of Melchoir Vet. In May a former Catholic priest, named Michael Sattler had his tongue cut out, his body torn open with red hot tongs after which he was pinched five times with the same instrument, before being burned to ashes. Two of his friends were thereafter executed by the sword and his wife was drowned. Sattler had declared that “infant baptism is of no avail to salvation.” Leonhard Keyser had also been a priest, in Bavaria. He died in flames that August, but his body would not burn, so it was hacked to pieces and thrown into a nearby river. A few weeks later Thomas Hermann and sixty-five of his church members were martyred.
Then on this day (November 20) in 1527, Weynken Claes was burned to death in the Hague, Holland, for her testimony of Anabaptist faith. At her trial nearly every statement she made was a quote from the Word of God. When she was finally asked, “Do you then, not fear death, which you have never tasted?” her reply was: “This is true, but I shall (actually) never taste death, for Christ says: ‘If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.’”
Oh, that we might have the same testimony, the same degree of scriptural knowledge and the same spiritual strength as these children of God.