ABSTRACT
It was on Friday, 23 November 1649 that the Lord spoke to Thomas Totney and changed his name from Thomas to TheaurauJohn – or so he was to claim. For twenty-one days TheaurauJohn was beset with inexpressible sufferings. Afterwards God poured a sea of knowledge into his soul, communicating to him divine learning by inspiration. To TheaurauJohn was revealed an understanding of all tongues under heaven and upon the earth. This was the gift of tongues, a pure language given to TheaurauJohn that he might preach the everlasting gospel, the divine law of the light and love of God. Thus did TheaurauJohn come forth, fitted with light and secret knowledge, to call the Jews in the last days. But to those that had not ears to hear TheaurauJohn was the promised prophet, raised up by God, crying vengeance in the streets, declaring woe and destruction upon the bloody city of London. For the great day of judgement was coming, when the ‘Earth shall burn as an Oven’ and all the proud, the wicked and the ‘ungodly shall be as stubble to this flame’.1 Perhaps he was the new prophet who, in March 1650, appeared at the Old Exchange with sword drawn to pronounce woe and destruction upon London. The prophecy, though, did not come to pass and the inhabitants of the ‘Metropolis’ seem largely to have ignored such calls to repentance and the warnings to cleanse themselves of their bloody defilement.2
