John Reeve (religious leader)

John Reeve (1608–58) was an English plebeian prophet who believed the voice of God had instructed him to found a Third Commission in preparation for the last days of earth. This commission was third in succession to the Mosaic Law and the gospel of Christ Jesus.

He and his followers came to be known as Muggletonians, named after his cousin Lodowicke Muggleton. The pair saw themselves as the last prophets and the Two Witnesses foretold in the Book of Revelation chapter 11 verse 3.

Reeve was born in Wiltshire. His father, Walter, was styled a gentleman but who fell on hard times. As a result, John and his elder brother, William, were apprenticed tailors in the City of London. William was Lodowicke Muggleton's first employer as a journeyman tailor. Mercurius Politicus (1653) says of John Reeve and Lodowicke Muggleton "only one works and that is Muggleton; the other (they say) writes Prophecies."

A Transcendent Spiritual Treatise was the first Muggletonian book. It is written in the first person singular by Reeve but appears under the names of both Reeve and Muggleton as "the last true witnesses". The book was printed in 1652 with a second, slightly different, print-run the following year. It could not be openly published since it could not be licensed. It purports to be a message from Christ Jesus to the elect by way of his last prophet and is a forerunner to God's reappearance in the skies above earth on the Day of Judgment. It announces Reeve and Lodowicke Muggleton to be the last two witnesses "and suddenly after we have delivered this dreadful message, this God the man Jesus, will visibly appear to bear witness whether he sent us or not." The job of the two witnesses is to declare the mind of God. They are given a power to expound scripture beyond anything that has gone before. Anyone rejecting their commission commits the unforgivable sin against the Holy Ghost. The witnesses shall pronounce such a person cursed by God. The book then proceeds to a number of specific themes.

Reeve embarked upon his career as God's chosen prophet by issuing, in 1653, an eight-page pamphlet entitled A General Epistle from the Holy Spirit unto all prophets, ministers and speakers in the world. Reeve pronounced sentence of eternal damnation on two classes of people: those who heard of his commission but despised it, and those who continued to preach the message of the existing churches. Reeve says such ministers are not sent by God. They possess no commission and their opinions are merely their own. "You preach to the people out of the bottomless pit of your own lying imagination, which is the Devil." And perhaps more tellingly, "You know not the Lord Jesus who requires mercy and not sacrifice, who causeth the sun to shine upon the just and unjust."

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