Johannes Kelpius (German pronunciation: [ˈjo:hanəs ˈkɛlpi:ʊs]; 1667 – 1708) was a German Pietist, mystic, musician, and writer. He was also interested in the occult, botany, and astronomy. He came to believe with his followers in the "Society of the Woman in the Wilderness" that the end of the world would occur in 1694. This belief, based on an elaborate interpretation of a passage from the biblical Book of Revelation, anticipated the advent of a heavenly kingdom somewhere in the wilderness during that year. Kelpius felt that the seventeenth-century Province of Pennsylvania, given its reputation for religious toleration at the edge of a barely settled wilderness, was the best place to be. Philadelphia had been founded in 1682, but the city and the Province of Pennsylvania had quickly becom