We were ministering at a church in London last year, where we experienced a powerful move of the Holy Spirit. Many of the those who came to the meetings got blessed as the Holy Spirit poured out, empowered, healed, and filled those there.
We later on in the trip ministered at one of their sister churches in Paris. There was a lot of warfare and difficultly getting to this church in Paris, especially with a crazy parking fiasco, that had us under serious stress and warfare.
The pastor said when we finally got into the building, albeit a bit late, “I believe the Lord will manifest His power as you minister!” That was an encouraging word after such a struggle and distraction.
It turned out that he nailed that! The Holy Spirit moved in radical power and some people were knocked backwards, almost looking like they were hit by a bomb blast as the Holy Spirit poured onto them when we prayed for them. We had a revival time as the Lord poured out His power at the service that day.
Sometimes God’s power is strongest when we were are at our weakest, being so ruffled from the parking mess I was quite distracted going in to the service, but surprised and rejoiced by the way the Lord moved! Hallelujah!
Well in between ministry, when things are a little calmer, we like to visit, when the opportunity arises, some of the places that tell something about some of the history of the area, especially when it involves something about Christian History, revivals of the past, or the Reformation.
We had a few unexpected surprises in that vein on the last trip. One of them was while we were going through London after that aforementioned ministry there, before heading off to France.
We were in the area of the British Library and decided to pop in for a visit. We’d been there before, but I have figured out over time and visits, that they tend to change their exhibitions of historical books and artifacts quite regularly.
As we walked up to the display cases, we were stoked to come upon one of the last remaining Wycliffe Bibles in the world. John Wycliffe is known as the Morning Star of the Reformation, meaning he was a forerunner to many of the things that Martin Luther took on later.
The Reformation
When Martin Luther posted his Ninety-Five Theses on the Castle Church door in Wittenberg, Germany, on October 31st, 1517, it turned out that it was the spark that initiated the Protestant Reformation.
The Pope’s response to Luther’s Theses was: “Who is this drunken German? I’ll have that heretic burned at the stake within two weeks!” Well, it didn’t really go the way the Pope said, even though popes had done just that with dissenters many times; the Word of God was on Luther’s side and he wouldn’t be so easily silenced. Many were impacted by the truth Luther was bringing forth and turning back to biblically-based faith and supporting Luther.
As Luther’s confrontation of church abuses caught fire and spread, another tactic was tried by Rome: Have Luther debate the Catholic theologian Johann Eck. Known as a master debater, they figured Eck would bury Luther and make quick work of him.
Luther was a Catholic priest himself, but through reading the Bible, his spiritual eyes had been opened to see that the Catholic Church had long since abandoned its roots and substituted a host of money-making schemes like indulgences (papers declaring forgiveness of sins when the proper donation was made which was no less than selling forgiveness) and the veneration of relics (bits of bone allegedly from Saints of the past). These relics, according to the Catholic Church, could confer time off purgatory when viewed along with the always demanded stipulated donation.
Rome didn’t realize the depth of insight, wisdom, and knowledge that Luther had garnered from studying the Word of God and they underestimated his ability.
Luther rose to the occasion in the debate with Eck and was an equal match in his command of Christian History and scriptural truth. Luther made it clear, citing early Church Councils, that it was none other than the Catholic Church itself, that had strayed from its original roots and teachings.
Eck came back with an accusation that Luther was a Wycliffite and a Hussite.
During a break in the debate, Luther searched the library to find out that both John Wycliffe and Jan Hus were leaders that had attempted to bring reform in previous centuries before him, but were condemned as heretics for seeking to turn the Catholic Church back to its foundations in the Word.
Hus was burned at the stake, and while Wycliffe had escaped their clutches while alive, his bones were dug up after he died and were burned as well. The implication was clear: Luther better cool it or he could face the same fate.
Instead of shrinking back in fear, Luther came back as the debate resumed and declared boldly: “I am a Wycliffite and a Hussite!” In the end, the debate only served to elevate Luther’s status, the last thing they wanted.
Wycliffe and Hus
John Wycliffe and Jan Hus were forerunners of the Reformation.
Jan Hus, who was from Bohemia (modern-day Czech Region) was also a Catholic priest who began to see the errors the Catholic Church had embraced and sought to bring reform. Hus was greatly influenced by Wycliffe’s writing and confronted the Pope’s claim that he was a mediator between God and man, which the Pope had made at the Fourth Lateran Council. This meant the Pope was above a normal person and equated himself with the savior. This was a gross contradiction of the Scriptures, which say emphatically that there is only one mediator between God and man: Jesus Christ!
Hus also said that it is Jesus Christ who is the head of the church and not the pope, which is of course what the New Testament Scriptures teach in Col. 1:18. Hus was persecuted and burned at the stake in the year 1415 for his efforts to turn the church back to the Word of God. He actually made a prophecy right before he died: "You are now going to burn a goose, but in a century you will have a swan which you can neither roast nor boil." (Hus' name means goose in the Czech language.) This was fulfilled through Luther 100 years later. Luther has been pictured with a swan in some paintings to show the fulfillment of that prophecy.
John Wycliffe, is known as the Morning Star of the Reformation.
Wycliffe lived in the mid and latter 1300’s and attended Oxford University. He was a stalwart figure there and in the church. In fact, Oxford’s early reputation in scholarship owes much to Wycliffe. Over time, Wycliffe saw the way the Catholic Church had drifted away from the anchor of truth in the Scriptures during the Medieval Period. Its wealth and opulence had corrupted it, and it had replaced the Gospel with money-making rituals and superstitions like relics and indulgences and the cult of the saints.
This constant drift away from the truth seems endemic in humankind’s very existence. Paul the Apostle had to write, not too long after planting the Gospel in Galatia, quite strongly to the Galatians to deal with their similar drift away from the Gospel and confront their return to clinging to rituals and dead works. This is why the Book of Galatians was a centerpiece in reform and one Luther relied on quite heavily during the Reformation.
Much like Luther later, Wycliffe had become quite disturbed by these practices. While reading the Bible Wycliffe, much like other reformers including Luther, found no relics, indulgences, purgatory, saint worship, nor prayers to saints; no holy water, no processions or the like, through which the Catholic Church lavishly garnered lucrative donations. In fact, these were more aligned with pagan practices. Nor did he see that the Pope, nor priests, had the place to confer and issue forgiveness. Like Luther, he saw in the Bible that it was only faith in Christ which was taught as necessary for receiving forgiveness and salvation.
He thus felt that he should put the Bible into the hands of the people in their own language that they may see for themselves that it is faith in Christ that brings salvation and not all these rituals the church was using as replacements for the Gospel.
Like Martin Luther, and William Tyndale later, Wycliffe thus worked to translate the Scriptures into the vernacular language of the people: in his case the English of Great Britain, and make it accessible to all, not just priests and bishops.
This was a high crime at that time, the Catholic Church at the Synod of Toulouse in 1229 officially forbade the laity to even possess a Bible—yes, as crazy as it sounds, having a Bible according to the Catholic Church was a crime—and they also opposed vernacular translations. They allowed only Latin as the permitted language for the Bible.
Latin was a long dead language that very, very, few could read and comprehend. It was obvious that keeping the Bible in Latin could keep the people in the dark regarding all the rituals the Church had used to replace the Gospel.
Wycliffe saw the need for the Bible to be in the language of the people and worked to translate and distribute the Bible to the common person, who he felt could read and understand it and be blessed by it, regardless of the Catholic Church’s prohibitions.
He employed common people to help him as well in these endeavors, and in so doing was employing that New Testament practice that Luther highlighted later as well called: “The Priesthood of all Believers.”
Wycliffe managed to do all this in the last nine years of his life; God saved the best for last. Like Corey Ten Boon, he served God the most in his latter years, as it is never too late in God’s Kingdom.
Wycliffe made a valiant effort in his translating, but the Latin was all he had access to in order to translate the Bible into English. He and his helpers, called Lollards, who he sent out to preach and distribute Bibles, also helped copy the translations by hand, which was a very long, and painstakingly slow process.
Luther and Tyndale, roughly a century and a half later after Wycliffe, would have the advantage not only of the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg to make copies of the Bible they translated, but they also had access to a Greek text of the New Testament that had been recently assembled and published in their time by Desiderius Erasmus. Those advances greatly helped further their efforts and fanned the spread of the Reformation, which in turn spawned revivals in later times.
Wycliffe stands as a Morning Star of the Reformation, a forerunner in his effort to bring reform and make the Bible available in the language of the people. His efforts made a great contribution and helped lay a foundation for the later Reformation and subsequent revivals.
