In early 1428 AD, the mortal remains of a former rector of a parish were exhumed from beneath the flagstones of church property in Lutterworth, a town in the English Midlands. An array of powerful men stood out from the crowd of locals. The vicinity’s bishop, along with other ecclesiastical dignitaries, the High Sheriff and his officers, canons and lawyers, watched as gravediggers unearthed a coffin, raised it, opened it and exposed its contents to the curious onlookers. The remains of the man who had died 44 years earlier were then taken out, carried in a solemn procession along the streets of the town and down to a wooded hillside to a field of execution by a bridge on the River Swift. A Catholic ceremony thus began and under a decree from the Pope, the desecrated body was ‘damned’, unfrocked, chained to a stake and burned… the bones broken, ground to powder and the ashes deposited into the river. All visible trace of the one who was accused of “treason against God” was destroyed. The accusation? Heresy. His name? John Wycliffe. His crime? Attempting to bring the Word of God to the common man.
And so, here we are, 400 years after the Bible was put into the hands of English speaking people — blessed with possessing the Word of God as a result from dedicated men like Wycliffe, whose efforts brought its sacred message to us. Millions of faithful men and women the world over for centuries, have been richly blessed by their access to and subsequent acceptance of Scripture and in the witness of these glad tidings.
Yet, Wycliffe at least died of natural causes — not so with William Tyndale. Within a century, the Catholic influence was still seeking to burn ‘heretics’, but this time alive — if they could! It is a proven fact that the “arch-heretic”, William Tyndale, is credited for writing no less than 80% of the King James Version Bible and, in turn, has been a bigger influence on the English language than William Shakespeare. His only crime? One of such passion that he had no other recourse than to leave his homeland for the continent — to continue his work of translating the Greek New Testament for the sake of the everyday man, that he might have God’s comfort revealed to him in his own tongue. The man who became known as “God’s Outlaw” could readily identify what we in our own community are at times too fearful to examine (read the “Epistle Dedicatory” in your KJV and see their view as to the ‘man of sin’ being that ‘Popish Person’). Tyndale spoke vehemently against indulgences, purgatory, Papal intercession, the immortality of souls, exaltation of saints, and prayers to saints. He knew all too well of the ‘antichrist’ system, condemning the ‘priestcraft’ as he called it, denouncing the ‘Popes’ bloody dogma’, reviling the ‘mitred monster’. He daily risked his life from Romish spies for the sake of printing and smuggling his Bible translations back into England. He taught himself Hebrew after arriving in Europe, so that he began to translate the Old Testament as well! His immortal words live on and are truer than ever. His response to a clergyman’s statement was, “We were better off to be without God’s laws than the Pope’s.” He also said, defying the Pope, “If God spare my life, ‘ere many years, I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the Scripture than thou dost!” In the end, it was the love of his fellow man and God’s Word which led to him being martyred in 1536, knowing that all who would enter into the reward would face persecution. We now have entered 2011 and plans are being readied to commemorate the 400th anniversary of his work…and so we ask, dear reader, what compels you to carry on The Work?
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One