Sabbatai Zevi proclaimed himself the Jewish messiah at age 22 in what is now Izmir, Turkey. His reputation soon reached Eastern Europe, where Jews facing brutal pogroms were drawn to his incendiary teachings. With the advent of the messianic age, he claimed, Jewish law was obsolete — fasts became feasts, and days of atonement became celebrations. As European Jews flocked to the Ottoman Empire, Zevi set out for Constantinople to depose the sultan, who threw him in prison and forced him to convert to Islam. An 18th-century Polish Jew named Jacob Frank would later claim to be Zevi’s reincarnation, attracting a substantial following of his own.

Around 1747, a Quaker in Manchester, England, named Jane Wardley had a vision that God would soon return as a woman. She found that woman in Ann Lee, an illiterate former factory worker who joined Wardley’s “Shaking Quakers” sect in 1758. Lee quickly amassed followers and brought them to New England, preaching a gospel of absolute celibacy and pacifism. There the Shakers established dozens of utopian communities centered around communal property; only one survives today, with just two members.

The 19th-century Indian prophet Mirza Ghulam Ahmad holds a rare distinction: he’s the only person in Muslim history to present himself as both the Mahdi and Jesus, who he held survived the crucifixion and died naturally in India. Active in an era of unusual apocalyptic fervor, Ahmad challenged several other contemporaneous messiah claimants to “prayer duels” and held public debates with religious authorities that condemned him. His many followers, the Ahmadiyaa, remain controversial today — all Pakistani Muslims must denigrate Ahmad when they apply for a passport or a national ID card.