The Burning Of William Tyndale
487 years ago today, a lion hearted man of God was brutally murdered in the streets of England. His crime? He believed the Bible alone should be the sole authority over the church and that every single Christian ought to have a copy to read for themselves.
Based on this urgent conviction, William Tyndale began immediately translating the Holy Scriptures from their original Greek language into the language of the common man, which was English. He was mightily persecuted for that work. He was threatened on a daily basis by the Catholic Church. And, ultimately, he had to spend his remaining days on foot, living as a common criminal, while he finished the task of his translation.
After finishing the New Testament in 1525, Tyndale worked tirelessly to smuggle those same New Testaments back into England, where owning a Bible was not only illegal, but could get you killed.
In fact, this is exactly how William Tyndale died. No more than a few years later, while working on translating his Old Testament edition from Hebrew, Tyndale was found near Brussels, arrested, and charged with the crime of heresy by the Catholic Church. For his punishment, he was dragged out into the cobble stoned streets, strangled to death in front of an onlooking crowd, and then his body burned visibly at the stake.
And while this is a sad day in the history of the English speaking peoples, it also offers tremendous hope. While Tyndale's God allowed the smoke of his body to rise up and over Europe, this same God was also causing the winds of reformation fire to blow. Not long after William Tyndale’s death more editions of the Bible were printed, including the King James Version of 1611, which became the most published book in all of human history.
Our God can cause light to come out of awful darkness and new life to come even out of such horrific instances of death.
Today, when you hold your English Bible, take a moment to thank our great God for dear saints, like William Tyndale, who have gone before us, and who have made it possible for you and I to read the only book in all the world that was breathed out by the breath of God.
Sola Scriptura!
