Jan Block (Anabaptist Martyr - Burned at the stake in Nijmegen, outside the Molenpoort on July 23rd 1569).

Jan Block (Anabaptist Martyr - Burned at the stake   in Nijmegen, outside the Molenpoort on July 23^rd 1569).

Jan Block was a wealthy young man in the Dutch town of Nijmegen. This city on the Waal River in Gelderland is in the southern part of the Netherlands. Anabaptists had lived and worked here as early as the late 1530s, and there had been a number of martyrs. The Anabaptist church in the Netherlands had by the 1550s been given the nickname Mennonites, after the name of Menno Simons, the stronger leader and writer of the movement.

In 1557, Jan Block was converted and came into the church. His conversion itself is a testimony to the dynamic of the new lives being created by the Spirit of Christ as they came to him. Block was converted through seeing the change in the life of his friend, Symon van Maren, who came to Christ. As Jan read the New Testament, he became convicted of his own emptiness and waste, and became aware of God’s call for him to live a new life. He, with Symon, sought out the Anabaptist leaders. Making his confession of Christ as he met with them, he was baptized into the Anabaptist fellowship as a disciple of Christ.

His new life could not be hidden, for Jan was well known. The authorities almost immediately moved to arrest him because of the publicity and influence of his conversion. Jan was betrayed by a traitor in the city of Nijmegen, arrested and taken to prison.

The sentence was pronounced – he was to be burned at the stake! Jan received this word with the composure of faith. When he was led to the scaffold it was as though he was in charge of the details, he was so composed. At the stake he pointed out the carelessness of the executioner in that he had not bored the holes at the proper places to tie him. Van Braght says his conduct was as though he was going to a festival or wedding feast.

Jan Block then bowed in prayer and commended his soul to God. The executioner roughly tied him to the stake and lighted the fire. His spirit and grace, his calmness in death, so affected the lords, that several who had sat in judgment over him wept to see him die.