Steven Lawson: Tyndale & the English Bible

welcome to another installment of a rare bookroom lecture i'm steve nichols president of reformation bible college we're here on the campus of rbc and we're in the library of rbc to my right is the rare book room and in there we have a number of rare and antiquarian bibles which is why i'm very excited about this lecture this lecture is on william tyndale tyndale just lived an action-packed life and he's absolutely central to the story of the english bible now we don't actually have a tyndale bible in our collection i think the last time one went up for auction it was about forty eight thousand dollars so if you'd like to help us with that uh we'd be glad to have you assist us and we can have a tyndale bible but we do have tyndale leaves and so we have uh this leaf which is from the old testament it's from ii samuel it's from a 1549 printing of the tyndale bible it's a little bit of the larger leaf not quite a folio but a larger leaf printing and we also have this leaf which is a delightful leaf this is from a 1537 printing now the significance of the 1537 printing is this was the first time the complete tyndale bible all the books of the old testament and the new testament was published and so this leaf is the end of the book of acts and it actually says here at the bottom hear andeth the acts of the apostles so this is our 1537 leaf we also have a an erasmus greek text this of course was the text tyndale used this is a 1546 printing of erasmus text tyndale would have used a much earlier printing the erasmus text and the significance of it is not just the greek text but also an improved latin text so this has side by side greek and latin columns so we don't have that tyndale bible but we do have a number of items in our collection that are related to tyndale and then of course that flow from tyndale's work in the english bibles that were to come so we're going to be talking about william tyndale very excited about that but i'm also excited for our speaker our speaker is no stranger to us at ligonier and at reformation bible college it is dr stephen j lawson it's great to have you dr lawson dr lawson is the president of one passion ministries he's a ligonier teaching fellow and he is also on the board of rbc and he is the editor of this wonderful series a long line of godly men and he's also the writer of most of the volumes he's written the volume on william tyndale this was published in 2015 and as soon as i read this i told dr lawson we need to turn this into a movie like this is just a great story and then just this year we published the earlier figure in the english bible and that is his book on john wycliffe in 2021. well dr lawson is a real pleasure and a privilege to welcome you to be our rare book room lecture speaker and to lead us into the life of william tyndale thank you stephen dr nichols well what a joy it is uh to be with you today and we're going to talk about william tyndale and if you were to ask me who is my favorite reformer that's that's a hard um answer to come by it's almost like who's your favorite child we could go with the boldness of martin luther we could go with the brilliance of john calvin the brashness of john knox but for me my favorite reformer is william tyndale and the reason i love william tyndale is he made a contribution that calvin never made he produced a bible in the language of his people and he made a commitment that luther and calvin never made he died as a martyr for the gospel of jesus christ and so i think he is someone who's very worthy of our focus for this lecture now what is remarkable about william tyndale is that three lines intersect in this one life and any one of these three would set him apart as perhaps the man of the century but all three come together in william tyndale first of all he was the father of the english reformation when you study the reformation and we love the reformation do we not because it was a back to the bible movement and a recovery of the gospel of jesus christ the man who was most responsible for the english reformation is undoubtedly william tyndale but more than that he was the father of the english bible and that is what really pushed him to become the leader of the reformation john wycliffe had already translated the bible into english but it was from the latin the latin vulgate so it was a an inferior translation really and william tyndale is the first man to have the greek and the hebrew and to do a direct translation from the original languages so he's the father of the english reformation he's the father of the english bible and then third he is the father of the modern english language every line that tyndale translated he is standardizing the english language that you and i speak at this point there is no english dictionary there will not be an english dictionary until over 150 years later in 1703 and william tyndale is literally minting and coining the language that you and i speak and that's an amazing thing and the first english dictionary that there ever really was was by william tyndale a glossary at the end of genesis and exodus and leviticus as he is he is coining words that have never been used before ark a scapegoat jehovah and he has to define these words and so he really becomes the father of the english dictionary as well so all these lines intersect and this one man in his imprint upon western civilization is staggering today we would say the international language of business is english if you want to do business abroad you have to speak the english language or you'll be left behind and it is actually william tyndale's english language that we use so what can we say about him john fox who wrote fox's book of martyrs called him the apostle of england that's a staggering statement and j.h merrill dubane who was the great reformation historian called tyndale the mighty main spring of the reformation in other words the entire english reformation is set in motion by william tyndale uh leland reichen has said that he was a linguistic genius whose expertise in multiple languages dazzled the scholarly world unquote it would be almost impossible for us to capture the brilliance of william tyndale he he was not only an oxford graduate with two degrees but he was proficient at the highest level in eight languages in fact not only could he write them he could speak them and he could speak those eight languages so well that if you heard him speak in your language you would assume he grew up next door to you he was just a linguistic genius and brian edwards has called tyndale the heart of the reformation in england he goes on to say in fact he was the reformation in england so what an extraordinary figure he is we need to set the context for the time in which william tyndale entered into the world in order to really appreciate the heroic endeavor that he undertook it was a day that you and i could scarcely imagine in that it was a day shrouded with spiritual darkness over all of england it was a day so dark that there were 20 000 catholic priests who knew nothing of the bible who could not even translate scripture out of the latin who would preach in latin the people would not understand latin and people would come to a worship service and not even understand the language in which the service is being conducted in 1401 there was past legislation by parliament known as the burning of heretics then a person would be burned at the stake if it was found out that you had an english translation of the bible or if you were teaching or preaching in the english language you would be burned publicly at the stake and in 1408 there was past what is known as the constitutions of oxford and in the constitutions of oxford the archbishop of canterbury wrote it is a dangerous thing to translate the text of the holy scripture out of one tongue into another for in the translation the same sense is not always easily kept well he is right it is a challenge to go from one language to the next but it can be done and it had already been done in the catholic church when they translated the bible out of the greek and the hebrew into latin so they already had a translation that was in another language and yet um the archbishop is really just stonewalling the entire issue he goes on to say in the constitutions of oxford we therefore decree and ordain that no man hereafter by his own authority translate any text of scripture into english no man can read any such book in part or in whole it called for the death penalty if you were found to have any translation of the bible in the english language and in fact in 1519 there were seven lollards those were preachers who had been sent out in the tradition of wycliffe to preach the gospel in the english language throughout england there were seven of them who were burned at the stake simply for teaching their children the lord's prayer in english so it was a suffocating time spiritually in which spiritual ignorance at the highest level held england in a death grip and it was into such a setting that god raised up william tyndale it was not the best of times and the worst of times it was just the worst of times period but the darker the night the brighter the light and as william tyndale would translate the bible into the english language in the darkness of that day the gospel of jesus christ would shine the brightest so i'd like to walk us through the life of william tyndale i'd like for you to know when he lived and where he lived and what he did and and how he did it because he is a he is a true champion of the faith when you grow up you need to name your children william tyndale just to remember is his contribution he was born we think in 1494 back then people were not born in hospitals where their their delivery date was written down and so as best we can determine the year is 14 just to put that in historical context luther would nail his 95 theses to the wittenberg door 1517. calvin would enter geneva in 1536 and so he is just a little bit ahead of those times as far as when he was born he was born in the western part of england near wales uh of a family that was they were landowners they were farmers they had some means and some resources enough to be able to send their son their brilliant son william to oxford when at that time oxford was the leading educational institution in the land and as tyndale goes to oxford he enters at age 12. that was not unusual for that time it was almost like entering into a preparatory school that would prepare you for higher education he would be a student there at oxford for a decade for the next 10 years he would receive a bachelor's degree in 1512. he would receive a master's degree in in in 1515 and he made the comment that there was never any exposure to the bible in fact oxford did everything that they could to prevent you from studying the bible and they laid a groundwork for some eight or nine years of false philosophies and false religion of course fostered by the roman catholic church it would only be after eight or nine years that they would allow you to study or read the bible but it was only after they had already brainwashed you and after they had already given you false worldviews and false philosophies and so william tyndale was educated in a what we would call today a humanistic secular uh education after he graduated from oxford with a master's degree and it demonstrated his brilliance he went to cambridge cambridge was the other leading institution educational institution of england and in 1516 he enters cambridge for further study and there he comes across what we would call today a small group bible study it was known as the as really little germany because they were reading martin luther's works that had come across the english channel they were meeting in a what would be like a starbucks uh coffee shop known as the white horse inn and they would sit there and discuss reformed theology they would discuss biblical theology and they could clearly see the contrast between what they had been hearing in church and what they had been told in school yet what the scripture was so clearly teaching and out of this little small group bible study there would be nine martyrs the greatest preacher of the english reformation hugh latimer the greatest theologian of the english reformation nicholas ridley the architect of the english reformation thomas cranmer but also in this small group bible study was william tyndale who would become the engine that would be driving the english reformation through his translation efforts well it is at that time that tyndale comes to saving faith in jesus christ he's had exposure to the truth to the light and he is brought into saving relationship with god through his son the lord jesus christ a whole new world has has opened up for him it it's like what martin luther said when he was converted in 1519 that once he saw the truth of the gospel the whole bible changed in the way that he saw it well similar experience for tyndale and he realizes that he needs personal time to be able to now re-educate himself and to restudy the bible so he withdraws from cambridge and he goes back to his his hometown area gloucestershire which is again on the western uh close to the western border of of england and there he works on a large estate for a very wealthy man sir john walsh and there serves as his personal secretary serves as his personal chaplain and serves as the tutor for his children and it gives him time buys him time to study more intently the word of god and be able to connect together the full counsel of god and sound doctrine and he begins to preach and he begins to preach in a small congregation and he comes to the realization that all of england must be lost that the entire nation virtually must be separated from god and there would be only one way that england could be reached with the gospel and it would be for them to have a bible in the language that they speak to be able to read a bible to be able to come to church and hear a preacher preach from the english language and to be able to sit in church and to hear the word preached and to and to process that and to apply that to your life well as tyndale is coming to this realization because he's working on this very prosperous estate there would be clergy from the catholic church who would come and have dinner and in the midst of one of these dinners there was a somewhat heated discussion took place at dinner over the veracity of the word of god and the authority of the pope and this catholic priest made the staggering statement that we had rather have what the pope has to say than what the law of god has to say well that punched wickliffe's hot button and he said at that point he was determined that a plowboy in the field would know more of the word of god than the pope in rome that he would be a man on a mission that he would give his linguistic skills to interpreting the bible into the english language something that had never been done before out of the original greek and out of the original hebrew and to give the english-speaking world an accurate translation of the bible that was straightforward that was true to the text and that was easily read and heard so william tyndale goes to london because he would have to have permission from the bishop of london to be able to translate the bible into the language of their people it would you he would receive the death penalty if he was to do this in an unauthorized manner well when he goes to the bishop of london he assumed he would have a quick yes who who would possibly say no to such a project as this he was immediately rejected because across the english channel as germany saxony now has a german bible that martin luther has translated the new testament in parts of the old there has been quite a social upheaval and it led to what was known as the peasants revolt and the bishop of london was fearful that the same thing would happen in england that that if the people have the truth and realize they've been lied to all these years the people will rise up and we who are in positions of authority will lose our power and so tyndale was denied permission to translate the bible into the english language so he stays in london for a short period of time no more than a year and he preaches in various places and there is a christian businessman who hears him preach and hears and learns of his desire to translate the bible into the english language and this godly now protestant reformed businessman says i will financially support you for this endeavor so he and a handful of others pooled their resources together and they said we will stand with you and we will free you up to do this translation project well tyndale had come to the realization that such a work could never take place in england that it would be far too dangerous and so at age 30 william tyndale realized he must leave england never to return he must leave england and never to marry and go to the continent of europe and undertake this dangerous task of translating the bible into the english language and when he sets out and this is so remarkable when he sets out to do this task there was no church that stood with him there were no elders that laid hands on him there was no denomination that commissioned him there was no missions agency that sent him out william tyndale was a one-man swat team for the lord he was a committee of one and he decided by himself that he will translate the bible into the english language and he would really become like athanasius contra mundum against the world he would be like what martin luther would become one man against the world and so william tyndale left england as an outlaw of the government of england and with every verse that he would translate he was committing a capital crime against the king of england who happened to be henry viii yes that henry viii with all the wives that he had and so tyndale leaves england as i said never to return and as he leaves he goes to germany and he goes to germany and there he goes uh first to cologne he goes to cologne really after he first goes to wittenberg he wants to go to wittenberg where martin luther is so he can sharpen his knowledge of hebrew very few people in all of europe even new hebrew there i mean there were not hebrew professors out and about except maybe just a handful like at the university of wittenberg there was not one single hebrew professor in the entire nation of england that that's how hard it was to be able to try to crack the nut of the old testament from the original language and so there at the university of wittenberg tyndale studies begins to study hebrew and it will take him several years before he can master it he also sharpens his knowledge of greek as philip melangthon who was martin luther's right-hand man was very proficient in the greek language and so it was really an iron sharpening iron time for tyndale he was there for a very brief period of time but he was there and he had exposure to really imbibe the the spirit of the reformation from there he goes to cologne germany which was the largest city in all of germany and his reasoning was as a foreigner from england who looks different sounds different conducts himself different from the native people it would be easiest for him to remain anonymous in a large city where there would be people from other countries passing through it's also in cologne would be the largest catholic church and so under the shadow of the largest catholic church in germany he finds a printer and in order to print what he will translate it will not only cost tyndale his life if he's caught it will cost the printer his life if he's caught well he finds a man to print the new testament and he has translated it and has done really a remarkable job doing so some of the workers in the print shop one evening went to a local tavern and had a little too much to drink and they began to talk very openly and freely and it was overheard in the tavern what the project was and there were those who were adamantly opposed to luther and the reformation and they purposed that they would raid the print shop and take the entirety of tyndale's translation of the new testament well tyndale caught wind of this and in the providence of god he races to the print shop gets there before the raid can occur gathers up all of his works and they had gotten as far as matthew chapter 22. i think about verse 13. they had just begun printing the new testament he gathers up his work flees in the middle of the night and gets on a ship and goes down the rhine river he goes down the rhine river to the one city that would be most receptive to his project the city of worms germany it was at worms germany that luther stood his heresy trial in 1521 where luther made his great stand where he said my conscience is bound to the word of god i can do no other here i stand god help me tyndale goes to that very same town a very short time after luther and he finds a publisher a printer who is willing to take on the task now i want you to think about this in order for this project to come about there are several factors that have to fall into place and among those factors are these it'll have to be in a city that's on a river because there are no trucks and there's no trains to distribute the product these bibles that will be printed they're going to have to be put on ships and it's the only way to transport this much this many bibles a second the river will have to flow into the ocean because these are to be sent to england and to scotland so it's going to have to be a river that's going to flow in essence into the north sea where an international trade route can take them to england where german lutheran businessmen will be ready to re buy them and receive them begin to sell and distribute them there will also have to be forests nearby so that trees can be harvested so that they can make enough paper to print some 3 000 new testaments and so there would have to be also a printing shop large enough to undertake this task and so in verms all of these lines intersected and lined up and so the new testament was printed 1526 1526 and tyndale smuggled these bibles into england by hiding them in bales of cotton and so large bales of cotton became stuffed with his bibles they were relatively smaller so that in england they could be carried in a woman's pocketbook or inside the pocket of a man's overcoat and so they were put into these bales of cotton and taken out onto the north sea and there as they arrive in in england this is like diamonds falling out of the sky uh that this is a treasure beyond all treasures that there is now a bible in the english language and it is this is the first bible that's ever been printed with movable type also wickless versions were all hand copied and the penmanship was not always easy to read but now this is so accessible and readable to the english-speaking world and so now farmers and blacksmith and hat makers and people from all kinds of vocational backgrounds they begin to buy up tyndale's bible and it is a treasure beyond treasures his families would gather together and a father would read the bible to to their people to their families well the word eventually got out the bishop of london heard about this and so he went to saint paul's cross and preached a scathing sermon publicly against this translation and claimed that there were 2 000 errors in it and that only a heretic could have done the work and only a fool would buy it and he began to buy up as many copies copies as he could the catholic church is trying to buy them up just so that they won't be in circulation well there was another christian businessman who heard about this and he rushed in and with her his resources he bought up all the other bibles before they could buy up all the other bibles and funneled the money back to where tyndale was in essence to help finance the work that tyndale is doing and again it's just the providence of god causing all this to come together for good well as the work continues the word now comes to the king of england what's taking place and he sends out word that tyndale must be found and tyndale must be stopped and so there is a a series of men who are commissioned to be sent out from england to go to europe to undertake a manhunt for the fugitive tyndale and every attempt until the last attempt failed in fact one attempt multiple letters were sent to various cities hoping that one of them somehow would find their way to tyndale which it did and a secret meeting was arranged between tyndale and this emissary of the king of england and the emissary said that the king of england has promised to pay your salary and to give you safe travel back to england if you will stop your translating work and just return to your mother land well tyndale of course knew it was a trap and so he said i will do this i will come back to england if the king will appoint someone else to translate the bible into english well of course the king would not fall for that and this emissary as he tried to describe tyndale when he returned back to england he said he is a man who sings only one note like a violin player only has one string he has not no other string to play he is a one track minded man william tyndale he is pouring his entire life energy into translating this bible into the english language well sir thomas moore who was a part of the hierarchy of the church that is there in england did everything he could to discredit tyndale he wrote a book in which he called tyndale the hell hound and the devil's kennels called him a second coming of judas called him the heretic of all heretics and did everything that he could to drag the name of tyndale through the mud that would not deter tyndale he was a man on a mission he he will not be denied he will not be stopped as long as he has life's breath in him he is now ready to translate the bible into the the old testament into english so he begins with the pentateuch genesis exodus leviticus numbers deuteronomy takes him about a year to translate those five books but he has to stay on the move because he has to be anonymous he can't be found he's doing all this work in in back closets and in back rooms of british merchants who are doing business on the continent and who are sympathetic to the cause of the reformation and tyndale cannot be exposed in fact this is an interesting fact we only have two portraits of of of tyndale that have survived that era and both of them were painted after he died because he could not allow anyone to know what his face looked like he was that hated and he was that hunted down by the king of england so to stay on the move he boards a ship after translating for a year genesis exodus leviticus numbers and deuteronomy he boards a ship to move out into the sea and then come down the elb river and the ship that he is on is is overtaken with a horrible storm so [Music] overpowering that the ship that tyndale is on goes down suffers shipwreck and with that all of tyndale's books dictionaries study tools and yes the first five books of the old testament go down to the bottom of the sea a christian today would probably say well it must just not be god's will for me that that's a closed door from god and i'll just go about my life in another direction not tyndale tyndale will not be deterred he will not be turned to the left nor to the right he will continue to plow ahead and he goes down the elb river and he gets off the ship he settles down and he spends the next 10 months retranslating genesis exodus leviticus numbers and deuteronomy his resilience his endurance his steadfastness is virtually unparalleled and that's what i love about tyndale he was a man of sacrifice he was a man willing to take the path of greatest resistance to advance the gospel of jesus christ and the word of god and so as he translates these first five books in the old testament he he he actually writes an introduction to each book like what we have in study bibles today he puts side margin notes like we have in study bibles margins at the bottom of the page he divides out books in the bible by literary units he has a glossary at the end of these books that will help define the words that are being used in these books it's really the first study bible that there ever was and he then translates the book of jonah of all books because he believed the message of jonah must be preached in every pulpit in england 40 days and nineveh will be destroyed forty days in london will be destroyed forty days in oxford in cambridge will be destroyed um though he had the brilliant mind of a linguistic scholar he had the burning heart of a prophet and he wanted the message of the word of god the call to repentance to england to be blown as from a trumpet he also will translate the rest of historical books in the old testament so the pentateuch the historical books and then jonah just to fast forward a bit we come to the year 1534 it goes to antwerp and there is a christian businessman who has a large house and other christian businessmen live in this house and they have somewhat fellowship together and they take in tyndale so he can be in the back room and continue his work and so tyndale retranslates the new testament that he had done in 1526 so now eight years later he makes some three thousand to four thousand edits he is an obsessive perfectionist this must be the most precise translation of the bible that there can possibly be and it must be readable it must be simple yet straightforward he does such an extraordinary job that in 1611 when committees of scholars translate the king james version of the bible the reality is 90 of the king james bible was done by one man william tyndale 90 of the new testament it's estimated 75 of both old and new testament tyndale's work could not be improved upon by large committees of scholars who were involved in translating the bible long after he had died and so he produces a second version of the new testament 1534 then the next year 1535 he makes some more edits he he's just not content with just a good translation is not good enough it's got to be the best and so he upgrades it yet again and so he is ready to continue now working on the old testament when something very tragic occurs back in england there is a very wealthy man his last name is phillips who gave to his son harry phillips a vast amount of money to take to london to pay off his debts and to put in to safe keeping and this young man was a fool and he began to gamble and he lost his father's entire estate there's no way he can face his father the church in england finds out about this and they call for him and they cut a deal with him if you will leave england if you will go to europe if you will find tyndale and if you will have him arrested and have him hand it over to the authorities and have him put into prison and have him put to death then we will reach into the church's coffers and we will restore all the money that you lost well it was a deal that harry phillips could not resist and so harry phillips cut a deal with the devil just like judas for money and left england and went on a search for tyndale it's been 10 years since tyndale left he's tyndale's now 40 years old through various contacts and various networking he finds out where tyndale is he's with these english merchants who are all living in this one house and he establishes some contacts and he befriends tyndale and the other businessmen who had some street smarts about them say we don't feel good about this man we think you should keep your distance from him and there was maybe a little naivete about tyndale and he allows himself to be drawn into this relationship with harry phillips and harry phillips sets the trap he said let's go for a walk and so they leave the house the safety of the house and they walk down a very narrow corridor and harry phillips says you go first so tyndale goes first phillips comes in behind him and points over his head because he has authorities on the other side of the wall and behind the corner and they jump out and they arrest tyndale and after this long decade of hiding and being a man really on the run he's finally captured john rogers who had been led to christ by tyndale who was living in this same house he'd been a catholic priest um john rogers who was now the assistant to william tyndale in a strange providence he would be the first martyr burned at the stake by bloody mary years later in 1555. john rogers runs back to the house and gathers up all of tyndale's work and escapes in the night with his work before the authorities could confiscate it william tyndale is taken to what is today belgium just outside of what is today brussels he is stuffed into a castle that is really like a prison surrounded by a moat thick walls high walls and he is held there for 18 months he has held there for exactly 500 days there he lives in the in the cold um battles all kinds of illnesses is forced to live in darkness his only request was would someone please bring me a lamp in my hebrew dictionary and my hebrew copy of the old testament and let me continue to study well the time comes now for his trial which is a mockery of justice and they bring the charges against tyndale and his charges are six-fold they are number one you believe in justification by faith alone you are a heretic you believe in the bondage of the human will by sin you're a heretic you believe that christians should not pray to saints you're a heretic and one by one by one they conduct really what would be a heresy trial they condemn tyndale and they put him through the mockery of being stripped of his priesthood he had never joined a monastic order but he had been ordained as a priest and so he will now be excommunicated for the reasons so that he can be turned over to the government to be put to death so he goes through this mockery of a of a ceremony where they take glass sharp glass and they scrape his hand so they bleed signifying that the anointing of the holy spirit is now removed from you they put a robe on him then take it off signifying that you are no longer a priest multiple other things they then hand him over to the authorities to be put to death just like the pharisees and the sanhedrin did with jesus when they handed him over to pontius pilate and so the government has its trial and they condemn him to death so the time has come for the end of tyndale they lead him to a stake in a public setting they put a noose around his neck which was really a chain around his neck they put kindling and wood and brush brush wood all around him and encase him in wood and then they take gun powder and they throw gun powder into all this they give the sign for the henchman to hang him and so they're hanging by the neck then they ignite the flames and they lower his dead body into the flames and the gun powder is ignited and it blows up his body into so many pieces that there's nothing left to bury and right before all that happened his last words lord open the eyes of the king of england by that he meant open the eyes of henry viii that he would see the desperate need that england has for a bible and their own language that year was 1536 unknown to tyndale because he's been in prison for 18 months miles coverdale who was a part of the white horse inn and had been an assistant to tyndale earlier in his translation project had taken tyndale's work plus some of his own work which was very poorly done by the way and the year before he is put to death there is a coverdale bible that is now in print the year after he dies 1537 john rogers cleans up coverdale's poor translation picks up his mess and re-translates scholarly the rest of the old testament it is done so well that the king of england announces in 1538 that there shall be a bible chained to every pulpit in the land of england it's known as the great bible great bible because it was so large that a preacher could stand in the pulpit and could see it well enough to preach from it it would be chained to the pulpit so that no one could ever take it away so that the people could come during the week and come into the church and read the bible for themselves and to hear the word of god as it would be preached william tyndale was a true champion of the faith he was more than a trailblazer he was virtually the trail itself as he translated the entire new testament in a scholarly way as he translated the first five books and then the historical books and then jonah and as he trains coverdale and trains rogers to complete the task william tyndale is the man who gave the english-speaking people a bible and as he came to the english as he came to the end of his life he had fulfilled his life's ambition that a plowboy in the field will know more the word of god than the pope in rome and so it was so he is for me my favorite reformer though i'm a preacher and i would be so easy for me to say other preachers like luther or calvin or john knox the heroic sacrifice that this man made is unprecedented and is unparalleled and he is worthy i think of our esteem and should be an inspiration to all of us of what steadfastness perseverance and endurance looks like and to also be willing to stand alone if necessary for the cause that you believe to be true so that's our quick survey of william tyndale i see my good friend stephen nichols standing in the wings so stephen why don't you come on in here and i'm sure you'll have something to say i think we're going to have a break here shortly but you know this is such a compelling story the story of tyndale you told it so well so powerfully so thank you let's give dr lawson just a quick round of applause as i think [Applause] we are going to take a brief moment we're going to reset we're going to come back with a time for questions and answers thanks dr lawson we do have a few questions from some of our students here at rbc so we're going to start with one go ahead you mentioned twin tindale's translation of the book of jonah could you further explain what role that book played for tyndale's hope for reformation in england certainly that's a good question tyndale was of the deep persuasion that virtually the entire nation was unconverted and lost and in chains of darkness and as he had studied and read the book of jonah he saw the most extraordinary revival ever recorded in scripture took place when jonah went to nineveh and said 40 days and nineveh will be destroyed and what he longed for was that there would be preachers in england who would be bold and courageous who would call for the repentance of the nation and that it would begin with the king and so he translated jonah so that he would be in essence giving this book in the bible to be preached so 40 days and london will be destroyed 40 days and and yorkshire will be destroyed and that was his desire he he though he had the scholastic mind of a genius he had the burning heart of a prophet and a preacher and that's why he wanted strong preaching of the bible that would be what god would use to reach the nation with the gospel of of jesus christ and i don't know that i could think of a better book um especially in the old testament so we have another question yes um so you mentioned a bit about luther and bittenberg is there anything more to tyndale's and luther's relationship well what we know is very scant when he first comes to germany he goes to wittenberg and the clues that we have are interesting there's a register that you would sign as you would come there to wittenberg and to the university and we have tyndale's name inverted and he has to remain anonymous so um by just inverting the syllables of this one name william dale 10 um it's william tyndale and so he would be smart enough to to cover his track so we know he was he was there a high degree of probability the other reference interestingly enough comes from sir thomas moore who was the greatest adversary that tyndale ever faced who wrote i didn't have time to talk about it really uh earlier he wrote a six volume 500 000 word attack on luth on tyndale half a million words and so in that's and that's the second volume after the first volumes and in there he references tyndale going to wittenberg so we actually have the reference from his greatest adversary and so we're just having to be like sherlock holmes and peace and piecing together clues to solidify the fact that he was there in wittenberg and when he would have been in wittenberg beyond that we don't know about their relationship we just know obviously if he's in wittenberg and wittenberg to this day is a tiny little town you can't get lost in wittenberg no matter where you are that back then it would have been even smaller and those two would have obviously connected so we have another question we've got all the bright students you know for this dr lawson though our context is very different from 16th century england what do we as modern christians need to glean most from tyndale's testimony yeah i think number one is the centrality of the word of god the primacy of the written word of god and i do think we live in a day in which there's a famine in the land for the hearing of the word of the lord i do know that people are having all across our nation are having to drive great distances just to find a church that would have a bible in the pulpit and that the man would actually preach the bible rather than get up and entertain and tell stories and on and on and on so i think what we learn in our day is that the more things change the more things remain the same that we live in a nation of extreme spiritual darkness and extreme spiritual apathy and that we need to embody the courage and boldness of william tyndale and to be willing to do whatever it takes to get the word of god out and i what i love about tyndale and i mentioned it in the lecture is that no church sent him out there was no denomination that supported him there was no missions agency that sent him out there there were no elders that laid hands on him i mean he just saw the need and he went and did it and god surrounded him with with businessmen who would who were entrepreneurial and who would stand in the balance with him the only hope for this day is to come back to the truth of the word of god and as it was in tyndale's day so it is in our day that until we have a a re-establishment of the word of god in the churches you know i mean we'd love to see it in the culture and in the society if we could just get the bible back into church that would be a significant step in the right direction which makes a university a college like reformation bible college so distinct that it actually is a bible-based correct curriculum and to train people to go out into a real world with real truth from the bible so i think that's what we learned from tyndale and in it and it requires resilience it requires audacity it requires fierce dedication in order for the kingdom of god to be advanced and we we need to to realize that it's not going to be an easy task in in our day um it's not going to happen with just social media blasts and and blogs and things like that i mean there's got to be the penetration of the people of god taking the message of the word of god into the into the highways and byways and it's going to require shouting it from the housetops to get the na the attention of of the nation but it's got to begin in the church in first peter 4 let judgment begin in the house of god so i think that's that that's what we can take with us and and really the attitude of tyndale is just to put it in in a vernacular whatever it takes that's what he was prepared to do i mean whatever it takes uh he will go the second mile third mile fourth mile fifth mile he'll he'll go to whatever length to the point of being willing to die as a martyr for the word of god to advance so that that's what it's going to require of us in this day whatever it takes whatever it takes my friend well i think it's a great place to end dr lawson thanks for being with us sharing of your friend from the past william tyndale and thanks all of you for joining us and thank you for joining us for another installment of our rare book room lecture we'll have another one shortly thanks so much you

Channel: Reformation Bible College

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Id: 9laZCGNjxKo

Length: 66min 9sec (3969 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 16 2022