Engelbrecht, Johann (1599-1642)

German religious visionary. Engelbrecht acquired his psychic gifts after an illness, when he announced that he would live forever. In an account of his visions he states:

"I heard for 41 nights the holy angels singing and playing on the heavenly music to my bodily ears. Those would be wise witlings who are unable to believe anything but what they hear or grasp themselves. Our Lord has been beforehand with, for he opened the corporeal ears of the widow Shamann, who, sitting up with me one night and being in profound devotion, clapping her head to mine heard such a grand heavenly concert of music that she was not able to express it sufficiently. Anyone inquiring of her she will give the same account."

The ecstatic visions of Engelbrecht were followed by physical and other psychic phenomena. Troopers fired at him and broke a lance to splinters on his head, but he walked off uninjured. In ecstatic condition he preached for weeks without food, weariness, or loss of strength. To prove that his abstinence from food was genuine, and that he was fed spiritually, he went voluntarily to prison, guarded for a week or so from all possibility of material sustenance, and came out as strong as when he entered.

He predicted and foresaw in a vision in 1625 the events that the French Revolution brought about. When the vision was explained to him, he writes that he heard a voice say,

" 'John, get up and write down what thou hast seen.' But as I kept lying still in my bed I received a blow upon my face, and heard a voice say: 'Thus shall it be with all who do the work of God negligently.' Upon which I got up, lit a candle and wrote down the vision and exposition. Now when the day came and the pastor saw me, observing my eye to be black and blue, he asked me which way it became so. On explaining he was greatly surprised."

Sources:

Engelbrecht, Johann. The Divine Visions of Johann Engel-brecht. 2 vols. Northampton, England, 1780.