William Tyndale

You can learn a lot about a man when he is experiencing trials and difficulties. Our victories only show us how we handle prosperity, but our defeats illuminate our true character. This is how we can quickly learn about William Tyndale. In 1535 he was sentenced to prison at the Castle of Vilvoorde. Now you might be inclined to think that you if you had to be in prison, you would choose a castle, but this was no bed and breakfast. An enormous moat surrounded the castle and the wet stone walls made for a miserable environment. There was no forced hot air and not even a fireplace to break the chill. Have you ever seen a large walk-in cooler that restaurants use? Stick a small bed and desk in that cooler and we can begin to imagine what Tyndale’s prison was like. Tyndale’s life slowly ebbed away in the chill of that castle prison.

To this day, the only existing document in Tyndale’s own handwriting is a letter he wrote from Vilvoorde prison. This is what he wrote.

“I beg your lordship, and that of the Lord Jesus, that if I am to remain here through the winter, you will request the commissary to have the kindness to send me, from the goods of mine which he has, a warmer cap; for I suffer greatly from cold in the head, and am afflicted by a perpetual catarrh, which is much increased in this cell; a warmer coat also, for this which I have is very thin; a piece of cloth too to patch my leggings. My overcoat is worn out; my shirts are also worn out. He has a woolen shirt, if he will be good enough to send it. I have also with him leggings of thicker cloth to put on above; he has also warmer night-caps. And I ask to be allowed to have a lamp in the evening; it is indeed wearisome sitting alone in the dark. But most of all I beg and beseech your clemency to be urgent with the commissary, that he will kindly permit me to have the Hebrew Bible, Hebrew grammar, and Hebrew dictionary, that I may pass the time in that study. In return may you obtain what you most desire, so only that it be for the salvation of your soul. But if any other decision has been taken concerning me, to be carried out before winter, I will be patient, abiding the will of God, to the glory of the grace of my Lord Jesus Christ: whose spirit (I pray) may ever direct your heart.”[i]

I have here the modern equivalent of what Tyndale asked for in his letter: a Hebrew Bible, a Hebrew grammar and a Hebrew dictionary. This man was freezing to death in prison and the thing he most desired was big, heavy books written in Hebrew! If I were in his place I would have probably requested a pile of large books so that I could burn them to keep warm, but not Tyndale. He wanted these Hebrew books so that he could continue his translation of the Old Testament into English. He was rotting in prison with a death sentence hanging over his head and his chief concern was to translate the Bible. After eighteen months in prison he was finally executed by burning at the stake. But here Tyndale received more mercy than most; because he had been a priest, he was first strangled to death before they lit the fire. The Foxe’s Book of Martyrs records Tyndale’s dying prayer: “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.”

Who was this man who was willing to die in order to see the Bible translated into English? Who was this king to whom he addressed with his dying breath? What difference does this make to us today?

Let’s begin with Tyndale. He was born about 1495 in England of a modest family. The Tyndales were not wealthy, neither were they prominent. He graduated with a Master’s degree from Oxford in 1515, and if you recall your history, Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses on October 31, 1517—only two years later. Tyndale was right in the heart of the Protestant Reformation, and the Reformation was fundamentally about sola scriptura. If you are not familiar with this Latin phrase, please make sure you remember this. Sola scriptura simply means: Scripture alone. You probably know that the Roman Church had long abandoned sola scriptura and had replaced it with Papal doctrine and teachings. At Tyndale’s birth, the church was hopelessly corrupt in both doctrine and practice. It was a return to Scripture alone that fueled Martin Luther and it was a return to Scripture alone that drove Tyndale to his own death.

This may not seem remarkable in our day, but we need to understand that in the early 1500’s, Scripture had been terribly corrupted and cleanly removed from the hands of everyone except priests.

This chart shows a brief history of the translation of our English Bible. By the year 500 AD the Bible was translated into about 500 different languages. But sadly, 900 years later the Bible could be found in only one language—the Latin translation from 390 AD. All other translations had been outlawed and lost. This would have been fine if Latin was spoken by everyone, but by then it was mostly a dead language.

How many Bibles do you have at home—five, ten, twenty? Imagine not possessing a single copy. Imagine a local church with no Bibles. Imagine a country with no Bibles. Now imagine the whole world with no Bibles that could be read by the masses—just a single Latin translation that had been very corrupted over the centuries. It’s no wonder the priests and papacy ruled the church—the people had no way to even begin to challenge their beliefs—and if they did challenge the church’s beliefs, you would likely be branded a heretic and surrender your freedom…or your life.

Finally in 1384, John Wycliffe translated the Latin Bible into English. This was a valiant effort, but with two big problems. One, the printing press had not been invented yet, so every Bible had to be painstakingly copied by hand, Second, in 1408, all English Bibles were officially outlawed, and in order to demonstrate their commitment to this law, church officials dug up the body of John Wycliffe, burned his bones and threw his charred remains into a river. How would you like to have begun translation work under those circumstances? Out of this ecclesiastical mess, God providentially placed his hand on a man named Erasmus, who in 1516, proceeded to publish an original Greek New Testament. This was the beginning of the reformation because no longer did anyone have to rely on the corrupted Latin version but they could build their translations upon the original language. Tyndale enters the scene again at this time. Do you recall when he graduated from Oxford? He graduated in 1515—just one year before the Greek NT was completed. Can you see how God was working all of this out in his perfect timing? God was moving the hearts of many men in different countries all at the same time to recover his holy Word.

We see Tyndale’s passion emerge about seven years later as he was staying at the home of a wealthy merchant. This man was gifted in hospitality and many priests were guests in this home, so Tyndale took every opportunity to interact with them. When he could no longer hold in his frustration and his burning vision, one day he said to a visiting priest: “If God spare my life, ere many years pass, I will cause a boy that driveth the plow shall know more of the Scripture than thou dost.” In the face of extreme diversity and almost certain death, Tyndale’s vision was to see the Bible translated into English so that the average plow boy would know the Scripture’s better than an educated priest. Now that is a compelling vision—and one that made him into an outlaw as he had to flee England to carry out his mission.

His vision for an English Bible created two prominent enemies. The first was King Henry VIII-you remember the one whose favorite pastime was chopping off people’s heads—including the heads of two of his six wives! Can you imagine being married to this guy? We can imagine his wife serving King Henry his breakfast. Shaking uncontrollably she says, “How do you like you eggs this morning dear? Yes dear, your bacon was carved from a royal pig, not one of those commoner’s pigs. Oh, your coffee tastes a little bitter? Sorry about tha….” CHOP—goes her head! Henry wanted a divorce from his first wife (the idea of chopping her head off hadn’t occurred to him yet!) and Tyndale spoke out against this divorce in one of his publications. He sure knew how to choose his enemies.

His other chief enemy was Sir Thomas More. More was rabidly pro-Rome, a man who had a similar delight as Henry for executions. John Piper describes the seething hatred for one of More’s victims.

“John Tewkesbury…was whipped in Thomas More’s garden and had his brow squeezed with small ropes till blood came out of his eyes. Then he was sent to the Tower where he was racked till he was lame. Then at last they burned him alive. Thomas More “rejoiced that his victim was now in hell, where Tyndale ‘is like to find him when they come together.’”[1] Why would Tyndale have taken on such barbaric men like King Henry and Thomas More, just for an English Bible? The final goal was not just to know Scripture but to know the Jesus of the Scripture. The chief issue for reformers like Luther and Tyndale comes from another Latin phrase: sola fide—by faith alone. The Roman Church had added many works to the list of requirements for salvation. The church had taken the clear message of the gospel and warped it into a magical and mystical religion of works. Once the Bible was rediscovered, the gospel message was rediscovered. The gospel had been hidden for centuries.

Because of this gospel rediscovery, Tyndale felt the missionary burden of the entire English speaking world on his shoulders. Imagine the enormous weight that he must have felt. It was probably both a great burden and a great delight. He did succeed in translating the English NT and he was furiously working on the OT right up until his execution. He completed, printed and smuggled thousands of New Testaments into Europe. The church bought up thousands of his copies and burned them, but in so doing, they provided additional fiancés to print even more New Testaments!

We owe Tyndale a great debt of gratitude. As I said, 90% of his English phrases were directly incorporated into the King James Bible. Here is a sampling of the English phrases we owe to Tyndale:

“Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3)

“Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 4:9)

 “Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:4)

“Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name” (Matthew 6:9)

“The signs of the times” (Matthew 16:3)

“The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41)

“He went out . . . and wept bitterly” (Matthew 26:75

“A law unto themselves” (Romans 2:14)

“In him we live, move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).

“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels” (1 Corinthians 13:1)

“Fight the good fight” (1 Timothy 6:12)

If you take out the “thee’s and thou’s”, the reason so many people love the King James Bible is directly due to these kinds of English phrases. If you appreciate the beautiful word-smithing of the King James, then Tyndale gets the credit.

Why does any of this matter to us almost 500 years later? It matters for several reasons.

1. We should be inspired by the dedication and determination of men like Tyndale. Let their lives motivate you to a more passionate service of Christ.

2. We should rejoice that God saw fit to sovereignly plan the lives of many people in many countries all at the same time in order to bring about the reformation and rediscovery of the precious gospel. Just like with Elijah, God always leaves a remnant of followers to spread his word.

3. We should commit ourselves to continual reform. Most of you know Chuck Smith, founder of the Jesus People movement and the Calvary Church movement. Just last month an article appeared in the LA Times which detailed the split between Chuck Smith and his son, Chuck Smith Jr. Smith Jr. has been moving toward a redefinition of Biblical Christianity. He has rejected the reality of Hell as well as holding to other troubling beliefs. Smith Jr. had slipped so far from orthodoxy that the Calvary Church association was forced to do a type of church discipline with his church. His church has been removed from fellowship with Calvary. If we are not committed to continual reform then we will also slip into liberalism and an empty gospel. Tens of thousands of churches in the U.S. alone prove that you can possess the Bible and still lose the gospel.

This continual reformation must be founded upon sola scriptura and sola fide. If you don’t like those terms then use these two: the sufficiency of Scripture and the supremacy and exclusivity of Christ. Are you confident that God’s word is sufficient by itself to give us “everything we need for life and godliness”? Are you ashamed to profess that Jesus is the exclusive way of salvation? Perhaps when you are in church on Sunday morning you can confidently confess that Christ is the only way, but when you hear your coworkers talking about bigoted Christians who think their way is the only way, you become too frightened to defend the Savior who purchased your salvation. We need to contend for the faith with all our strength—or we will not have any faith left.

4. We should repent of our laziness in studying God’s word. We need to be reminded that hundreds of people died horrible deaths so your twenty copies of the Bible could gather dust on the shelves. The gospel message is dependent upon the revelation in God’s word. Without his word, there is no gospel, but the same is true if you do not study the Bible for yourself. No church has ever existed that can grow believers to maturity unless they learn how to regularly feed themselves on the Word of God. And as far as Bible translation is concerned, we still have a long way to go. Looking at these two charts from Wycliffe Bible translators, we see that even though the work of Bible translation has been accelerating in the last two hundred years, almost half of the languages in the world still do not have even one N.T. gospel in their language. The work of Wycliffe and Tyndale is still active and necessary today.

5. We need to have beliefs that are so firm that we are willing to die for our beliefs, but not become so radical that we would be willing to kill for them. The reformers were willing to die for their faith, but the Roman Church was willing to kill for their beliefs. It’s immediately evident which group were the righteous Christ-followers, isn’t it? Are you aware that when you stand for truth in the world, the world  absolutely believes that we are like the King Henry the VIII’s and the Thomas More’s of the world? When we stand firm for truth, the world thinks we are promoting a return to the Spanish Inquisition. Just last week I was accused of wanting to impose a theocracy and shariah law. We need to convince them that we are just the opposite—that we are willing to die for truth of the gospel, but never kill or harm for it. And how do we do this? By maintaining a precarious balance between truth and love—the same kind of balance we have been applying to Biblical Church discipline the past several weeks. If we can genuinely love people then they may be willing to listen to the truth, but if we march forward with truth and show no evidence of love, we will be mocked and feared. Let’s make this really practical—if you plan to vote “yes” on the marriage amendment, how do you feel toward those who will vote “no”? Are you frustrated by them? Can you say that you genuinely love them, or do you have a veiled loathing for them? Truth and love! Love and truth! Always both and never one without the other.

Here is one last fact about William Tyndale. He “fought the good fight,” as he himself put it, and after all he went through to fight for the English Bible, King Henry legalized English Bible and began printing thousands of copies in 1537—one year after Tyndale’s execution. In the absence of God’s sovereignty, this looks like a great tragedy, but from the perspective of God’s sovereignty, it was all according to his plan.

Let me leave you with a verse from John 12, in the King James version. Most of these words came from Tyndale’s hand, and they summarize his life. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” Tyndale died in 1536, but he died to self long before that. Tyndale’s death brought forth, and continues to bring forth much fruit—to our great benefit and to God’s great glory.

Rich Maurer

October 29, 2006