Johann Gottfried Herder’s paraphrase of the Apocalypse Maran Atha (1779) and Johann Caspar Lavater’s “Messiah” epics (1780/1783–1786) provide evidence that the tradition of Christian verse did not end, by any means, with the completion of Klopstock’s “Messiah,” as has been assumed by literary historians. Based on Herder's and Lavater’s works, this study is the first detailed examination of the importance of German Christian verse after Klopstock.