500th Anniversary of Luther's New Testament

Happy Reformation Day!

Photo reflections back from the 500-year Anniversary of the Reformation where a quarter million people flooded the little town of Wittenberg in Germany! 

October 31st is the 505th year anniversary of the Reformation, and it was also just the 500th year anniversary of Martin Luther’s translation of the New Testament into the German language.

 

A Little Background

 

We may take the easy access we have to the Bible today a little too much for granted. After all, we can just open an app on our phone, and we can have the Bible right there at our fingertips.

 

However, it was not always so easy for the common person to access the Bible. In fact, the Bible had become shuttered from access during the Medieval Period. The Catholic Church forbade the laity to even own or possess the Bible at the Synod of Toulouse in 1229, on the pain of torture and death, which many indeed ultimately endured. Vernacular translations were also opposed and only the Latin Vulgate was permitted for the Scriptures.

 

Since Latin was already a dead language, it was another barrier used to prohibit access to the Scriptures. As Oxford scholar David Daniell puts it, “It might as well have been in Chinese for all the good it did being kept in Latin! Very, very, few people could read Latin!”

 

Instead of the Scriptures “The Little Hours of Mary” were proffered which promoted the cult of Mary worship, church rituals, and generated money through stipulated donations. 

 

Enter Martin Luther 

 

Martin Luther had endured a long and difficult spiritual journey after entering the monastery in 1505. In fact, he felt further from God after going down the path of the prescribed rituals of the religious system than when he had first become a monk.

 

In all earnestness, Luther had sought to follow all the prescribed rituals dictated by the religious system and constantly confessed his sins as required. For, according to Catholic teaching, each and every sin must be confessed to be forgiven. Luther kept remembering things he’d done even as a small boy, and he came and confessed so much—once spending 17 hours at the confessional—his superior finally blew up at him saying: “Why don’t you go out and commit some real sins and come back when you actually have something to confess!” 

 

He was finally sent away from the monastery—as a way to offer him some distraction and get him out of their hair—and was thus directed to go into study of the Bible as a form of diversion.

 

It should not be assumed that this was normal activity during this time. Reading the Bible was not practiced, neither by those in the priesthood nor the laity. As mentioned previously, the Catholic Church had banned the laity from even owning or in any way having possession of a Bible at the Synod of Toulouse in 1229. Reading the Bible was reserved exclusively for those elite few who were considered theologians established in the hierarchy of the church. Only they were allowed to read and interpret it and had to stay in line with the papacy.

 

Luther was sent to study the Bible merely as a diversion; he had been a law student formerly so he was able to read Latin.

 

While reading the New Testament himself, Luther came upon passage after passage that declared that simple faith in Jesus Christ was all that was necessary for salvation. This was a complete contrast to what he experienced as a monk.

 

As a Catholic monk, he had grown exhausted and alienated from the heavenly kingdom he had sought. The heavy weight of constant rituals foisted upon him in the monastery did not draw him into relationship with the Almighty but instead created animosity in his heart and the peace with God that he so earnestly sought was nowhere in sight.

 

Here, however, in the very pages of the New Testament, he was finding something completely different from the teachings of the religious system: 

 

There was no requirement to confess all your sins to a priest. Rather the New Testament declared “There is one God and one mediator between God and man… Christ Jesus” 1Tim. 2:5

 

Nor did salvation require good works like the Catholic Church commanded, which included: giving donations to the church, venerating relics, confessing to a priest, praying to saints, vigils, holy water… and on and on! 

 

Rather the Word declared: 

 

“For it is by grace you are saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.” Eph.2:8-9

 

“Then they asked [Jesus] ‘What must we do to do the works God requires?’ Jesus answered, ‘The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.’” John 6:28-29

 

The religious system Luther encountered had required rituals and works for salvation as well as to lessen one’s time in purgatory. These things they required however were not found in the teaching of the New Testament. “Purgatory” itself was just another pure invention of Catholicism not found anywhere in Scripture.

 

Simple faith drew Luther into a living and saving relationship with the Savior Jesus Christ.

Luther wrestled with the Apostle Paul’s teaching in Romans about being justified by grace through faith night and day. He finally understood that Christ had paid the price on the cross, for our sins, once for all, and all that is required is to believe upon Jesus!

 

When he finally understood this the Holy Spirit came upon him, and his guilt and sin were lifted off his back! He says he was "born again" as he understood that his sin was washed away by simply believing in Jesus Christ! 

 

After being set free and experiencing the liberty of God’s grace, Luther was of no mind to return to the dead rituals of the religious system. 

Luther Nails the 95 Theses

 

He in time drew up some statements or "Theses" to engage some of the church theologians on the wayward path the church had taken. It bears mentioning that Luther did not challenge other doctrines that were still orthodox within Catholicism, and there were still many orthodox foundations. Luther only wanted to challenge where they drifted from the Scriptures especially in regards to salvation. 

 

However, the Ninety-Five Theses he drew up to challenge the errors the church had embraced, set off a spark that soon fanned into an international flame. 

 

After Luther had nailed his Theses to the Castle Church door in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517, some students took them and copied and widely distributed them, using the recently invented Gutenberg printing press to reproduce them. 

 

A perfect storm soon erupted fueled forth by the truth based on the Living Word of God and the distribution of this document through new technology. Before he knew what was happening, the Reformation had been ignited and Luther was in the middle of a conflagration.

 

To paraphrase Didier Erasmus, the famous theologian from Rotterdam, this confrontation Luther sparked posed a threat to: The religious establishment’s money-making system as well as the dictatorial nature and infallibility of the papacy.

 

When the Pope got wind of the issue, he said he would “have this drunken German burned at the stake within two weeks!” Although many attempts were made to shut down the emerging Reformation, it continued to roll forward.

The Leipzig Debate

 

A debate was proffered which many in the hierarchy believed would slap Luther down. They figured the renowned Catholic theologian Johann Eck would quickly shut down this simple monk Martin Luther quite handily. 

 

However, Luther rose to the occasion at the Leipzig debate, and was equal match for Eck in his knowledge of Scripture and understanding of Christian history. Luther showed that the church had itself strayed and had contradicted its own earlier councils and teachings during its slide away from the truth in the Medieval Era. 

 

Eck in response accused Luther of being a Wycliffite and a Hussite. Many had attempted to bring reform before Luther’s era, figures such as John Wycliffe in England, and Jan Hus in Bohemia (modern-day Czech Republic), as well as others like early reformer Peter Waldo in France and the Waldensians, who sought to distribute Bibles and pray for the sick. 

 

The Catholic Church had come out against these earlier reformers and continued to persecute those who attempted reform and translation of the Bible. William Tyndale was a contemporary and friend of Luther’s who was arrested and executed for his faith and work in translating and distributing the Bible in the common English language.

 

Luther declared that he himself was indeed a “Wycliffite and a Hussite” throwing caution to the wind! Luther, normally a mild-mannered person, boldly threw himself in with these earlier reformers, even though the followers of Hus and Wycliff had been ordered to be executed by the Pope, this was thus quite a daring thing to say. The Leipzig debate pretty much backfired and Luther’s popularity only seemed to grow.

 

The Diet of Worms

A Diet—a type of trial—was then set up in hopes of quelling the Reformation. Luther would have to answer before the Holy Roman Emperor—the most powerful and important man in the Western world at that time—Luther, a mere peon in contrast, sweated profusely as he was cross-examined in his presence.

 

He was originally told he would be able to explain and defend his writings and teachings. However, after he arrived in the town of Worms, Germany for the Diet, he found he had been lied to and was only given the opportunity to recant or face the consequences.

 

Before the council, while being questioned and cross-examined, Luther was being pressed hard to recant, but in response he finally retorted: “I cannot and will not recant, my conscience is captive to the Word of God, to go against conscience and the Word, is neither right nor safe, I can do no other, here I stand, so help me God.”

 

Luther threw up his hands into the air in the gesture of a knight and marched out to the applause of the Germans and the hissing sneers of the Spaniards—some of which were dyed-in-the-wool fanatics and enforcers of the Inquisition, torturing dissenters of Catholic strictures.

 

Frederick the Wise, the Elector Prince of Luther’s German region of Saxony, who was on the council judging Luther, saw that he was merely returning to the true roots of the Christian faith and declined to condemn Luther, as did some others in the Diet, but a rump of the Diet still voted to condemn him as a heretic.

 

During the night, however, the Bundeschuh—the sign of the peasants’ revolt—was placarded on the wall of the building where the Diet was taking place. This was a serious threat from the people that if Luther was arrested there in Worms, there would be rioting by the people. This sent the Diet into a panic. To appease the peasants—to whom Luther was becoming a hero—he was allowed to return home to Wittenberg and would be remanded into custody later to face the consequences of being condemned as a notorious heretic.

 

Frederick the Wise knew fanatics and assassins would be waiting for an opportunity to murder Luther on his return home, so he arranged for some of his own knights to hold up and kidnap Luther shortly after he embarked on his return home, so as to secretly take hold of him and hide and protect him.

 

The knights grabbed him shortly after he left the town of Worms, and with much yelling and cussing—purposely making a loud ruckus—they then had different knights ride off in different directions, while having Luther hidden and taken away to an old, abandoned castle, making sure no one followed after them.

Luther Translates the New Testament at the Wartburg

For ten months Luther was hidden away, holed up in the abandoned Wartburg Castle in Eisenach, Germany, where he testifies to experiencing some heavy and serious spiritual warfare. He says the attacks of men, including other priests and the pope railing against him and everything else he had endured, paled in comparison to the onslaught of Satan’s attacks on him while alone in the Wartburg. Isolated and without other things to distract his attention, Luther took on the great task of translating the New Testament into the common German tongue and completed his translation while he was there at the Wartburg.

 

Luther wanted others to see the clear teaching of the New Testament for themselves and see that: The Scriptures teach that Jesus Christ alone is the Savior! That Jesus Christ alone is the one Mediator between God and man. That one only need come to Christ in faith for salvation. These simple declarations became foundations of the Reformation and led to later revivals.

 

His publication of the New Testament spread a return of the true roots of the Christian faith throughout Germany and Europe and fanned the flames of the Reformation and spawned numerous revivals later. 

 

Jan Hus’s Prophecy Fulfilled

After the Diet of Worms in 1521, with Luther still at the Wartburg and his popularity seeming to only increase, the time passed and the possibility of safely arresting him was even less viable and was eventually abandoned, thus fulfilling the prophecy of Jan Hus, the Bohemian reformer, from a century before. 

 

Hus had attempted during his time to reform the wayward religious system of his day, and as he was about to be executed and burned at the stake for seeking to bring these reforms, he spoke out and prophesied:

 

“Today you burn me a goose (Hus’s name in Czech meant goose) but in 100 years another [reformer] shall rise, he shall be a swan, him you will not be able to burn nor boil!”

 

Hus was martyred in 1415. It was one hundred years later in the year 1515 when Martin Luther began to study Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, which led to his conversion. This encounter with God and His grace during Luther’s born-again experience set off the chain of events which fomented into the Reformation. 

Luther pictured with a swan

The Holy Spirit had opened Luther’s eyes to the salvation which is given freely through faith in Christ and the justification given by His grace. Try as they might they were not able to kill this swan. In his later years, Luther often had himself pictured in paintings with a swan next to his side, showing that God had fulfilled Hus’s prophecy through him!

 

 

These are some videos we’ve produced are helpful to learn a bit more about Martin Luther:

 

Martin Luther and the Reformation 

 

Martin Luther: Born Again into Amazing Grace 

 

The Priesthood of All Believers 

 

Luther quotes on the need to be filled with the Holy Spirit (short video with notable quotes)

The Reformation Spreads: Playlist of Reform Spreading into other Areas.

Grace World Mission

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Blog --Grace Notes-- http://gwmgracenotes.blogspot.com

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William Tyndale and the English Bible

William Tyndale, Persecuted Bible Translator

"The most important printed book in the English language" is what the British Library called one of the last remaining original William Tyndale New Testaments when they bought it!

They purchased it for a little over a million British Pounds a couple decades ago, and thus Tyndale’s New Testament was added to the British Library's already illustrious collection, which included such notable works like the Gutenberg Bible.

William Tyndale made the first translation of the New Testament into the English language from the original Greek in the early 1500’s. He also translated major parts of the Old Testament.

However, as the saying goes, “No good deed goes unpunished,” and Tyndale paid dearly, giving his own life for his effort to bring English speakers access to the Word of God in their own language.

The Reformation

This week on October 31st will be the 501st anniversary of the Reformation.

At this time last year, we had the blessing of not only being in Wittenberg, Germany for the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation, but also preached on the Reformation two days before in a church in Mandal, Norway.

We flew out a day later to Germany, where a quarter million people descended on the small town of Wittenberg, a little German town whose normal population in the city center—which everyone descended on—is only 2,100 people. We had a unique moment when we saw the country’s political leader coming in with a motorcade of cars, helicopters, and flashing lights, as we rode bicycles into the small downtown, one that boasts four Unesco World Heritage Sights on a single street, the only town in the world to have that. We figured the parking situation would be just impossible—it was—and we thanked the Lord for giving us a bit of insight and wisdom to rig up some rental bikes beforehand. Even though we had to ride twenty miles each way, it was well worth it!

501-Year Anniversary

This is a good time to reflect on the far-reaching impact of that Reformation that spread out from Wittenberg after the shaking that followed Luther’s posting his Ninety-Five Theses on the Castle Church door on October 31st.

The Reformation Spreads

For years, Germany was the engine fueling the Reformation, as Scholar David Daniell describes about the early period of the Reformation: “Germany was the powerhouse while England had nothing going.”

Over time, Martin Luther went from being labeled the “scourge of Christendom” to later having something akin to celebrity-like status. As time rolled forward, other scholars and leaders joined arms in returning to, and promoting more of a New Testament-based Christianity.

Although England lagged far behind, undercurrents of reform began to make their way across the channel and into the country.

Erasmus of Rotterdam had been promoting New Testament-based ideas at Cambridge University. Meanwhile, Luther’s influence began to make its way across the channel and sparked interest there as well. In time, Cambridge became known as a “little Wittenberg” and “little Germany” because of the growing influence of reform, and Lutheran, and New Testament, based ideas and influences being discussed and promoted there.

William Tyndale and The English Bible

As a Catholic priest, William Tyndale, like Luther, had experienced a conversion to Christ, which caused him to truly understand Christ’s grace and turn from just practicing religion to a true relationship with Christ. His thought and preaching subsequently moved into a reformed and evangelical direction.

He also was very influenced by Martin Luther, eventually leaving Oxford where he had been studying, as he found it was by and large resistant to the reformed waves moving through the land. As it happened, the Constitutions of Oxford held a decree—enforced throughout the land of England—that the Bible must only be in Latin, and forbade the Bible from being translated into the common, vernacular, English language of the people, on pain of being punished as a heretic: death by being burned at the stake!

As was the case in those days, few knew Latin, it was already a long dead language and the clergy were as ignorant of it and the New Testaments contents as was any commoner: William Warham, who was Archbishop of Canterbury in that day, complained that the monks were wholly ignorant of what the Bible, and especially of what the New Testament, contained. Most did not even know how many commandments Moses came down the mountain with—10 in case you are wondering, nor who was the author of the Lord’s Prayer—Jesus, of course—or where it might be found in the Bible, or if it was even in the Bible. A noted case had a monk ignorantly defending his dalliances, saying he thought that the Word commanded adultery when he was caught doing just so. Scholar David Daniell points out that the Bible might as well have been in Chinese for all the sense it made keeping it in Latin.

This position at Oxford University was one that would not be appreciated by a future Bible translator like Tyndale. Oxford’s unbending hold on this position, influenced by medieval Catholicism, would put Oxford on the wrong side of history, leaving it in the very lame historical position of having been a firm resistor of one of Britain’s greatest contributions in history to the English-speaking world.

Tyndale moved on from Oxford to Cambridge which, as stated earlier, was becoming known as a “Little Wittenberg” for its embrace and discussion of Martin Luther's reformed New Testament-based ideas. The White Horse Inn at Cambridge was a hotbed of Reformation discussions. Reform was in the air and spreading throughout parts of Europe, and even though England was a bit late to the game, many were beginning to embrace it.

Tyndale saw the need for a Bible in English, especially the New Testament, as translated from the original Greek. It should be noted that, roughly a century prior, John Wycliffe had made a valiant attempt to translate the Bible into English, but had only the use of the Latin Vulgate as his basis, as he had no access in those days to the fully assembled Greek manuscripts. Besides being inaccessible due to being in Latin, another problem, according to Erasmus, was that the Vulgate was full of errors.

Moreover, another huge technological advance had come forth in the interim: Gutenberg invented the printing press around the mid 1400’s. Wycliffe’s Bibles, in contrast, had to be copied individually by hand, a very slow and painstakingly long process.

Much of Wycliffe’s translated Bibles, and followers too, who were known as the Lollards, were rounded up and burned. Bibles, as well as men and women and children, were burned at the stake for desiring to know God’s Word. In fact, there is a noted case of a woman and her children all being burned at the stake for just having a copy of The Lord’s Prayer in her home, not really what you would call a concern to promote the Kingdom of God. This was an activity that was all too common for the Catholic institution!

Erasmus of Rotterdam, Dutch scholar, pre-Reformer, and Christian humanist, had been disgusted by the errors of the Catholic Latin Vulgate. In his own opinion, the Catholic Latin Vulgate was so riddled with errors and mistranslations that it was laughable. Furthermore, few knew or could read Latin, as it had been a dead language for a long time and only the highly educated learned how to read it. All of this, along with Catholic prohibitions against common people reading or possessing the Scriptures, kept the truth of God’s Word in the dark.

Erasmus set out to correct this and make a new Latin translation. But in order to be able to do this, he had to also assemble a complete Greek text, publishing this groundbreaking work in 1516. It was his Greek text, however, that much like Luther's Ninety-Five Theses, that turned out to be an accidental revolution. Erasmus’ assembly of the Greek New Testament into a comprehensive, accessible whole, gave reformers like Martin Luther and William Tyndale the ability to make a fresh translation of the New Testament into their respective native, vernacular tongues.

Luther’s translation made the Bible accessible to all Germans, whether educated or uneducated, rich or poor, noble or peasant, as did Tyndale for the English-speaking world.

In fact, Tyndale stated on one occasion to an educated man who held the laws of the pope and the Catholic Church higher than God’s Word: “…I defy the pope and all his laws…If God spare my life many years, I will cause a boy that driveth the plough, shall know more of the Scriptures than thou.”

Both Luther and Tyndale set out to make the Word of God to be available as never before and changing history in its wake. In fact, many of the advancements in the western world can be tied back to these very roots!

Tyndale Rearranges His Life to Fulfill His Purpose

Like Luther, Tyndale had seen the need for the word of God to be put into the common tongue of the people. He set out to do just so, rearranging his life to that effort. He moved out from Cambridge to Little Sodbury, out in the country in Gloucestershire. There, staying with a benefactor, he could have time set aside to work on a translation of the New Testament into English.

He had attempted to get approval from higher-ups in the Church Institution but that turned out to be a fool’s errand and only brought him opposition and persecution. He engaged in many debates with Catholic priests and leaders regarding the Catholic errors, but this led to more persecution and he eventually left the area. Though he had been warned by others, he seemed to be a bit naïve to the serious anger and opposition he was rousing in the Catholic camp. (This naïveté could be seen as a blessing for who knows how strongly one will proceed if all the obstacles are understood from the beginning.)

He had a stint in London where he reached out to Tunstall, the Catholic Bishop of London, but was given the cold shoulder instead. Tunstall’s cold rejection would later turn to white hot anger. There was a serious resistance to the Bible being put into the English language and Catholic leaders like Thomas More and Tunstall strongly opposed it. The Bible in the English language would undercut the man-centered penitential system of Catholicism and it was a threat to the hordes of money made off the relic, indulgence, penitential, and purgatory-based racket of the Catholic Church. As the persecution worsened, Tyndale departed England for the European continent after he connected with a man named Monmouth who helped him to fund some of his efforts.

Tyndale knew that if people could read the New Testament for themselves, they could see that simple faith in Christ alone is what was necessary for salvation. Tyndale writes: “Repent and Believe the gospel...and begin life anew! And his Spirit shall dwell in thee and be strong in thee and his promises shall be given thee at the last…and all things forgiven for Christ’s blood sake…Commit yourself to Him without respect either of thy good deeds or thy bad, repentance and belief is all! Works count for nothing in Christ blood!”

David Daniell points out that the Catholic Church, however, would never permit a New Testament in English from the Greek because neither the seven sacraments, purgatory, relics, indulgences, holy water, nor all their lofty ceremonies, could be found there, which were chief supports of the church’s financial system.

Tyndale Crosses the Channel

Tyndale eventually went to Wittenberg, Germany, and there he spent some time with Martin Luther. After meeting with Luther, whose German translation was a great aid in Tyndale’s efforts, he persevered in completing his New Testament translation while on the European continent, the first copies being printed in Cologne, Germany.

Tyndale had his pocket-sized New Testaments smuggled into his homeland of Great Britain. The small size made them easier to hide, and they became a huge hit and were widely popular.

Tyndale’s Bible was having a huge impact, and as scholar David Daniell points out, there was a new energy hitting Northern Europe:

"This energy which affected every human life in northern Europe…was not the result of political imposition. It came from the discovery of the Word of God as originally written...in the language of the people! Moreover it could be read and understood without censorship by the church, or mediation through the church, as it was written to be read, as a coherent cross-referencing whole. Such reading produced a totally different view of everyday Christianity. The ceremonies... of Catholicism are not there, purgatory is not there, there is no aural confession, no penance. The Catholic church’s support of its wealth and power collapses. Instead there is simply individual faith in Christ as Savior, as found in Scripture, that, and only that, justifies the sinner."

Fury Rises Against God’s Word

Bishop Tunstall, incensed by the New Testaments invading the land, sought to buy up the Bibles to burn them. But the man he had paid secretly gave the money to Tyndale, who ended up printing three times as many with the money. Thus, three times as many came into the land.

When Thomas More, outraged that Bibles were flooding the country, enquired as to how Tyndale was funding his effort to bring in so many, was told that it was by the Bishop because the money he was paying to buy up and burn the Bibles was getting to Tyndale to print more.

Tunstall proceeded with his public burning of the Bibles he had bought, which resulted in much outrage by the public. The thought that a Bishop, an alleged spiritual leader, would burn Bibles, burn God’s very Word, was abhorrent to many.

The word of God continued to come in and change lives in spite of many attempts to stop it, to even burn it!

The Word Spreads but Tyndale Pays the Price

God’s Word was spreading as were sentiments towards reform, but the powers that be still railed against it.

Unfortunately, Tyndale himself was betrayed, hunted down and apprehended, and subsequently jailed and later strangled and burned at the stake in Belgium.

He gave his life for his effort to bring the Bible to the English-speaking population. He might be pleased to know that one of his last remaining Bibles has been called "The most important printed book in the English language” by the British Library. That is quite an honor really, and one deserved by having sacrificed so much to give the English-speaking world the Word of God.

David Daniell points out that 90% of the King James Version’s New Testament is Tyndale’s work. It was the basis used by the scholars assembled by King James and what they worked from and then revised in places. The vast majority was left exactly as Tyndale worded it, with phrases we still use today in the English language; to many scholars his huge impact on the English language outweighs that of Shakespeare.

Such a high price was paid by many a reformer for seeking to return the people to the Word of God. Tyndale’s dying words were a prayer: “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.” Three years later, the King of England ordered the Bible (with Tyndale’s New Testament and the Old Testament that had been translated by Tyndale and Coverdale) to be placed in all English churches that all people may read it!

It behooves us to notice the price paid by those who went before us to give us the Scriptures in our own language, and take time to read and study its pages, remembering there are still places in the world even today where the Bible is forbidden.

Martin Luther and the Reformation: The Priesthood of all Believers

A must watch video on one of the most important events in post-
biblical Christian history. (Our second most popular video on YouTube.)
Direct link to video: http://youtu.be/WDr66ITavlI




Martin Luther and the essential topic of the Priesthood of all Believers.
Filmed on location in Eisenach, Germany.
Direct link to video: http://youtu.be/05_lc7EtsfM

On November 1^st, All Saints Day, in 1517, there would be a special indulgence issued by the church. An unknown Catholic monk named Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the castle church door in Wittenberg, Germany, the evening before confronting this and other abusive church practices. Indulgences were literally the selling of forgiveness—the church actually offered papers for the remittance of sins for payment rendered. 

The indulgence of All Saints Day in Wittenberg was especially odious as the church had accumulated numerous relics.  Claims of pieces it said to have amongst its collection would make even the most unskeptical person blush with embarrassment over the unbelievable things the church offered as part of the relic practice: a thorn that pierced Jesus’ brow, a tooth of St Jerome, four pieces of Augustine’s body, four hairs of the Virgin Mary, a piece of Jesus’ swaddling clothes and a piece of straw from his crib, a hair of Jesus’ beard, and a twig from Moses’ burning bush.  Those who made the stipulated contribution on the designated Day of All Saints and viewed the relics could receive for themselves or their dead relatives 1,902,202 years and 270 days off their own or their dead relatives’ time in purgatory(1) (a place invented by the Medieval church located between heaven and hell where one must still suffer for hundreds of thousands to millions of years to pay off sins).

Johann Tetzel who was hawking indulgences for the pope made a dramatic plea: “ Listen to the voices of your dead relatives beseeching you saying, ‘Pity us, pity us. We are in dire torment from which you can redeem us for a pittance.’ Hear your departed father or mother say, ‘We bore you, nourished you…are you so cruel that you are not willing for so little to set us free?  Will you let us lie here in these flames?’”  A master salesman, Teztel got many buyers of indulgences, which pushed Luther to a response.  The hideous indulgence traffic had started with the equally hideous crusades and it was time to say something.

While he was only putting up the Theses as a subject for debate with other theologians, his words ended up lighting a spark that exploded into the Protestant Reformation.  A group of students took hold of the Theses and reprinted them and began to distribute them all over the region in different universities and towns, and the furor over his confrontation of such unbiblical practices morphed into an international conflagration. The German population, when reading Luther’s, words responded with a boisterous, “Ja wohl!”

Sometime prior to this, Luther had been struggling trying to find peace with God.  Even though he had followed all of the rituals prescribed by the church, including long hours fasting, hours and hours confessing sins, doing penance over and over, even using indulgences, he felt further away from God after doing these rituals than when he first entered the monastery. 

He was sent away from the monastery to study the Bible, just to get him out of the priests’ hair with his endless confessions. In fact, his superior, frustrated with him, had told him he should go out and commit some real sins before coming back to confess. As he began to study the Bible he found out that its teaching was radically different than what he was being taught in the church system; the priests didn’t study or read the Bible so they wouldn’t have been aware of the differences since they just followed the order of church-prescribed rituals. 

As Luther mulled over Paul’s teaching in the New Testament, especially in Romans and Galatians, he began to see that Christ had already paid for his sins.  He states he began to understand what Christ had done and how He justifies us through faith in the work He did for us on the cross. Luther says that he was “born again” when the Holy Spirit opened his eyes.   He thus began to preach on Paul’s teachings in his epistles, but instead of being heard, the powers that be in the Catholic hierarchy attacked and persecuted him instead. 

Luther was naturally a low key and soft-spoken man, but as he was persecuted he took his stand upon God and His Word and a lion seemed to come forth from within as he stood up for the truth.

Along with the important foundation of “justification bygrace through faith”, which became an established principle of the Reformation, another of the important principles that Luther saw in the New Testament was “the priesthood of all believers.”

Luther saw the teaching that all believers are priests clearly in New Testament Scripture: “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation.” (1 Pet. 2:9) However, the Catholic system had fabricated an idea, foreign to the New Testament, that priests stood above regular “lay” people, both spiritually and authoritatively, and thus were superior.  Titles for example like “Mother Superior” for the headmistress of a convent are not mere niceties but actual acknowledgements that this person is superior and others are less than that person.  In fact, the pope is a semi-god in the Catholic system and an intermediary between God and man, which then follows the Catholic teaching that one must be part of the Catholic church to be saved, since the pope must mediate between God and man for a person to be saved.  This, of course, all goes completely against what Jesus taught: 

But you must not be called 'Teacher,' because you have only one Teacher, and you are all brothers and sisters together. And don't call any person [in the church] 'Father,' because you have one Father, who is in heaven. And you should not be called 'Master,' because you have only one Master, the Christ. The only ‘superior’ among you is the one who serves the others. For every man who promotes himself will be humbled, and every man who learns to be humble will find promotion. Matt 23: 8-12

I am the way, and the truth, and the life, no one comes to the father except through me. John 14:6

Martin Luther and his English contemporary William Tyndale both worked to get the Scriptures into the vernacular language of their people.  Since the Bible was only allowed in Latin and not to be possessed by common people according to Canon church law, the church was able to control people’s spiritual understanding.  These reformers’ proclamation that they would make the common ploughboy more knowledgeable of the Scriptures than the priests in the Catholic system was not a pipe dream.  All they had to do was get the Scriptures into the hands of the people in a language they could understand, and this did indeed happen since the priest didn’t read or usually have any knowledge of what the New Testament taught.  The reformers sought to liberate the people to understand the finished work of Christ and that in Christ there is a priesthood of all believers.

William Tyndale was an Englishman who was friend’s with Martin Luther and was greatly influenced by Luther’s translation of the Bible into German and sought to do the same for the English.  The two would meet at the White Horse Inn to share a pint and discuss theology.

Both worked in spite of severe persecution and attack on translations of the Bible into the common tongues of their people.  When Tyndale had translated the New Testament into English he had pocket-sized New Testaments smuggled into England from Belgium, which became hugely popular throughout the island nation. Tyndale had to flee England to try and survive severe persecution launched against him for his reformed ideas.

Luther had done his translation while evading arrest and burning at the stake and hiding in the Wartburg castle; there he translated the Bible into the common German tongue.   While Luther survived his ordeal, Tyndale however, was hunted down and strangled by the religious authorities and then burned at the stake.  He gave his life for seeking to translate the Bible into the contemporary language of his day; they would have done the same to Luther had he not been hidden by his elector at the Wartburg. 

Tyndale’s legacy lives on today. Many, however, are not aware of the fact that, according to scholar David Daniel, about 90% of the King James New Testament was the work of William Tyndale.  His influence on the English language is probably larger than any other single person as well and goes beyond even people like Shakespeare, as he coined phrases still in wide usage to this day in the English speaking world like: “salt of the earth,” “scapegoat,” “apple of my eye,” etc.

Luther’s and Tyndale’s idea was simple yet revolutionary, and subsequently opposed vehemently by the church. Tyndale was in fact murdered by that institution for seeking to reach the common man with the Gospel: Luther and Tyndale both wanted and worked to get the New Testament Scriptures into the hands of the common people in their own language, believing that this would result in the individuals’ understanding easily opening up to the finished work of Christ on the cross for them. They would likewise understand that they have been made a new nation of priests and kings forever in the kingdom of God, a kingdom where Christ alone rules and reigns in love and His subjects are lifted up by humbling themselves and not by exalting themselves over others. The greatest in the kingdom of God is one who serves others, not lords it over others.  They wanted to shine the light of Christ rather than keeping the people in the dark like the church system had sought to do. 

Thus, the believer in Christ is made new and forgiven by virtue of what Christ has done for him; Christ’s blood has washed and cleansed him and clothed him in righteousness.  That glorious blood has also made the simple believer of the crucified Christ a priest in the risen Son’s glorious kingdom forever—Hallelujah. 

Let’s remember the price paid by Christ for our sins and the price paid by His followers who went before us so we can have His liberating word!!!  

Footnotes:
(1)--Here I Stand by Roland Bainton--an excellent in-depth biography on Martin Luther.

400 Year Anniversary of the King James Bible

A woman and her children were dragged out of their house and fastened to a pole where dry brush was lit under them and they were burned alive. Their crime: reading the Bible in English, a practice strictly forbidden by the Catholic Church. It was England in the 1500’s when Catholic Bloody Mary had taken the throne and was determined to force Catholicism back upon those who’d been liberated from its idolatry and superstitions. Similar scenes were being repeated all over the country as Protestant Christians were being killed; possessing illegal Bibles in the English language could be deadly.

In January 1555 three pastors, Taylor, Bradford, and Saunders, who had all been former parish priests, were put on trial. They had come into the light of Christ’s grace and now preached the truth, for they had been able to read the truth in the available Scriptures made accessible by the work of William Tyndale, who had translated the Bible into English.

They were required to answer if they would acknowledge the Pope as the head of the Church and submit to His Authority, to which they answered that they acknowledged and submitted only to Christ. Death sentences were pronounced against them and they were taken away to be burned alive at the stake.

Taylor spoke before his death: “Good people, I have taught you nothing but God’s Holy Word and that which is from God’s blessed book the Holy Bible. I have come here today to seal it with my blood.” Taylor was able to say this because he had the Bible in his own language. Tyndale, who had translated it, was also killed for his efforts a couple of decades before. As the flames were lit and Taylor was about to be burned, he recited the 51^st Psalm in English when he was struck in the face: “You Knave, pray in Latin! I will make you!” the ultra-Catholic executioner told him.

Latin was the only language allowed for the Bible, prayers, or any other religious activity according to Catholicism and the Pope’s decree, and they fought viciously to keep it that way. Very, very, few knew any Latin at all however. Horrified with the realities of an English Bible and that the truth of Christ would be known, exposing their perversions of God’s Word, they launched a campaign of killing, maiming, and torture, to suppress any and all who would dare to even read or own an English Bible.

This year we celebrate the 400-year anniversary of the King James Bible. To properly understand this story, we must look back where the story takes shape—with the onset of the Protestant Reformation—to really understand the whole scene and the intense struggle of how such a work ever came about.

The Reformation, which had begun in Germany with Martin Luther, was now beginning to spread over other parts of Europe. Luther was a simple monk that was merely trying to find peace with God when he came into the revelation that Jesus had paid for his sins and he didn’t have to try and pay for them himself with works like prayer and fasting. While reading the Bible he came into revelation and understood Christ’s finished work for him on the cross. It was now all clear: simply by faith does one believe and receive what Jesus did for him on the cross, accepting his forgiveness and coming into his grace.

Luther had been born again while reading the Scriptures in the New Testament, specifically the books of Romans and Galatians. Seeking to find peace with God, he finally understood the finished work of Christ and the payment He made for sin.

That revelation spread throughout Europe, eventually leading men like William Tyndale to lay their lives down to reach others with God’s Word. Tyndale had been directly affected by seeing the great fruit of Luther’s efforts in Germany and the effect of Luther’s translation of the Bible into the German language to turn many to true faith in Christ.

After Martin Luther was born again he began to see serious problems with the institutional Catholic Church. He began to preach on Christ’s payment for sin and the grace He offers and also to write about the errors the church had embraced in resisting this truth. Then in 1517 he posted his 95 Theses on the Castle Church door in Wittenberg, Germany. Luther posted his Theses solely for the means of debating the issues, as is commonly practiced in university settings even to this day.

Some years before this the printing press had been invented by Gutenberg and students now got a hold of his Theses, reprinted them without permission—if copyright had been an issue back then like now there would have been no Reformation—and distributed them all over Europe. Before Luther knew it he was an international figure in the middle of a conflagration. The Reformation began to spread all over Europe and eventually came to England.

Thomas Cranmer began to read Luther’s writings. As Archbishop of Canterbury—England’s head of the church—he began to bring forth reformation teachings, ideas, and practices to the English Church, breaking away from Catholic superstitions, traditions, and doctrines.

King Henry VIII of England had been unable to bear a male child to inherit the throne. Henry had been basically forced to marry his deceased brother’s widow when only a teenager by the political powers of his day—the Pope had broken Catholic canon law and granted a special dispensation for political purposes for this marriage. Henry when he came of age wanted a divorce so he could marry another woman he actually had affection for, Anne Boleyn, but, because the Pope refused to grant him the divorce, he chose to break away from the Catholic Church instead. Though human motives took place on Henry’s part God was using it for His larger purposes.

Together with the confluence of Luther’s teachings and Cranmer’s adoption of the same, King Henry’s actions in some ways helped fan the flames that eventually, together with the confluence of Luther’s teaching spreading into Oxford and Cambridge, a widespread reformation movement within England began to arise. It continued under Henry’s successor Edward.

In time groups like the Puritans began to spring up, who were not trying to become “purer” than others but rather wanted to purify the church from unbiblical Catholic idolatry, traditions, and superstitions. They desired to see a foundation of grace and the work of the Spirit take place in believers’ lives and are known today as the first Protestant mystics. They merely desired a return to New Testament ideals, both in word and deed by preaching about living for Christ and walking in His Spirit.

As the English Reformation spread however, persecution arose when Henry VIII’s daughter, Mary, or “Bloody Mary” as she later came to be known, took the throne. She was a dyed-in-the-wool Catholic who severely persecuted Protestants, seeking to turn England back to Catholicism while putting hundreds and hundreds to death, thus earning her moniker, even having the Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer killed as well.

Cranmer was persecuted and pressured by the Catholics to sign a document recanting principles of Protestantism. However, when he was brought before trial, he decided to repent of his actions. So when it came time for his execution, he chose to place the offending hand that had signed the document into the fire first before he was killed by being burned alive at the stake.

Meanwhile, an avid scholar from Oxford named William Tyndale had been converted and influenced by the reformation, and was a contemporary of Martin Luther’s. Tyndale eventually began to work on a translation of the Bible, seeing the need for it to be in the common English tongue of the people and not just in the Latin of the scholars and the learned which resulted in keeping the Bible inaccessible.

Luther had translated the Bible into the common German tongue and Luther's translation began to have a great effect in spreading the Reformation and the understanding of Christ’s finished work and God’s grace.

Tyndale began a similar venture for the English people. Tyndale began work on an English translation of the Bible from the original Hebrew and Greek.

John Wycliffe had done an earlier English translation a century before, but he and his Lollard movement were severely persecuted by the Catholic church and most of his followers, including women and children, were put to death just for having Bibles. Though the Catholic Church severely persecuted and killed many of Wycliffe’s followers they never actually caught Wycliffe himself. And yet in a perverse act of vengeance, they dug up his bones and burned them after his death.

Tyndale saw the need for another attempt at getting the Bible into the common everyday language of the English people. So Tyndale began work on a translation into the English from the Greek and Hebrew, using Luther’s German translation as well as Erasmus’ Greek text for assistance.

As an extraordinarily gifted scholar who spoke eight languages, he was able to bring forth, by God’s grace, a remarkable work. Nevertheless, no good deed goes unpunished, and for his efforts he was severely persecuted and had to flee England. He went and stayed in Wittenberg for a time with Martin Luther. A recent discovery confirms his time in Wittenberg even though he was attempting to hide there incognito. After some time there and many meeting with Luther, including time at the White Horse Inn where they would discuss theology and share a pint, he fled to Antwerp.

He finished his New Testament translation and was well on his way with the Old Testament, but spies and assassins who had been sent to eliminate him were hot on his heels.

As Tyndale smuggled New Testaments into England, they became hugely popular with the people but increased his position as a target of the Inquisition—the practice of torturing, consficating property, and killing those who strayed from the Catholic Church’s tenets. The Inquisition began in the 1100’s at the 2^nd and 3^rd Lateran Councils and fully inmplemented as official Catholic doctrine at the 4th Lateran Council in 1215 where torture and murder were made official doctrine by a so-called Christian Church continuing its hideous practices even until the late 1800’s. The early reform movement in France known as the Waldensians were its first mass victims.

Translating the Bible into the common tongue of the people was verboten and brought forth the Inquisition to those who attempted it:

Some reasons that the Catholic Church wanted the Bible kept in Latin and not translated in the common tongues of the people were:

• They could prevent the common man from knowing what was really in the Bible and thus always hold power and sway over him/her, keeping them dependent upon the priests and the man-made religious system they had created of masses and rituals. This brought in enormous amounts of money through things like indulgences, i.e. forgiveness for payment rendered.

• By keeping the Bible in Latin they made sure only certain high ranking clergy could read it—which they rarely did—but also false doctrines could be buttressed up by the inability of people to access the Word of God for themselves. The murky and largely inaccessible translation in Latin helped them keep false doctrines like penance and purgatory alive.

• One of the early insights by Martin Luther in Germany was the discovery of a purposeful mistranslation of Christ’s words by the Catholic Church where they had changed the word “repent” to “do penance.” As Luther looked deeper into the meaning he saw vast implications: Repent meant merely “to change your mind” meaning that you agree with God that you are a sinner who needs and accepts His work of redemption on your behalf. “Do penance” on the other hand, meant to seek to work off the payment of your sin through your own works and rituals and efforts – exactly what the New Testament itself condemned as a slap in the face to Christ’s work on the cross for us at Calvary where he paid for our sins once for all.

Tyndale’s Bible spread the Reformation even more as people got hold of Bibles in English. Sadly, the assassins eventually caught up to Tyndale who was betrayed by a so-called friend. On October 6, 1536, in the town of Vilvorde, Netherlands, William Tyndale was tied to a stake, strangled, and then burned at the stake for doing God’s work of translating the Bible into the language of the English people so they could read it for themselves.

He was condemned by reason of a decree made by the Ultra-Catholic Holy Roman Emperor Charles V—the same Emperor who Luther took his stand before during the Diet of Worms, in Germany in 1521 where he cried out: “I cannot and will not recant anything. For to go against Scripture and conscience is neither safe nor right.”

Luther had escaped the death sentence by being hidden in the Wartburg Castle—specifically where he had done his Bible translation work. Tyndale however, sealed his own faith and efforts with his own blood.

As time progressed Bloody Mary’s half-sister Elizabeth eventually took back the throne, deposing Mary. Elizabeth, as Queen of England, was much more sympathetic to Protestants.

With the more open environment, Tyndale’s Bible spread even further. Over time, the popularity of the Bible grew and different groups like the Puritans even published various commentaries in the margins of Bibles.

When Elizabeth died she had no heir—populary known as “The Virgin Queen” she had no one waiting to take the throne. In an ironic twist of fate, it was actually Bloody Mary’s nephew who we know as “King James” who eventually came to power and would publish an Authorized Version of the Bible.

Known both as James VI of Scotland and James I of England he saw the need for an authorized version of the Bible for the whole of England.

Quite ironically, it was specifically because he was the son of Mary Queen of Scots that James had been raised in Scotland.

In an interesting turn of events it was in Scotland that religious freedom had actually been attained sooner than in England. After the killing by the Catholics of Patrick Hamilton and George Wishart, two popular Protestant leaders and preachers who were martyred for their faith, a popular rejection of Catholicism began to arise in Scotland. In turn John Knox later arose and helped lead the Scottish Reformation as well as the development and formation of the Scottish Presbyterian Church.

When James I of England a.k.a. James VI of Scotland took the throne, he was undoubtedly more sympathetic to Protestants than his mother but still remained quite traditional in his religious views. Those with power and means often live above the fray of common sentiment.

Thus, the Puritans, though appreciative of him for producing the Authorized Version of the Bible a.k.a. the King James Version, still found themselves on the short end of the stick with religious freedom in England. Being still persecuted specifically because they were seen as too radical a Protestant group, the Puritans eventually made their way to the New World and the American Colonies with King James Bibles in hand.

King James had assembled 54 scholars who worked on an Authorized Translation, which they completed and released in 1611.

However, they had continually referred back to the amazing and groundbreaking work that Tyndale had done as their reference point and the literal foundation of their work, directly incorporating so much of his translation in their work that, according to most scholars, including well-known Tyndale scholar David Daniell, fully 90% of the King James Bible’s New Testament is actually William Tyndale’s work. The same goes for the Old Testament from Genesis to somewhere around the Psalms—as far as he got when he was killed.

Thus, William Tyndale, the outlaw, the refugee, the man who did not and would not submit to the authority of the Pope nor the King, but instead chose to “obey God rather than man” (Acts 5:29), is the true unsung hero behind the publication of the King James Bible. It cost him his fortune and his very life but he laid it all down to do God’s will. Even today, generations are still reaping the benefits of his sacrifice to Christ’s purpose and calling.

The King James Bible not only helped spread the knowledge of God’s Gospel of grace that was regained in the Reformation, but was also carried across the sea to the American colonies by the Puritans, helping to lay a foundation of biblical faith in the new world of America.

Not insignificantly, the King James Bible gave the English-speaking world a codified, coherent, and unified language and lexicon, as well as a little thing that helped change the western world called literacy, changing in fact the course of human history.

One thing that is often overlooked in this whole scenario is that the King James Bible, this historic translation of God’s Word, is a direct product of the Protestant Reformation.

A reformation that started with a simple monk named Martin Luther who was merely trying to find peace with God when he came into the revelation that Jesus had paid for his sins and he didn’t have to try and pay for them himself with works like prayer and fasting. Rather, just by faith, believe and receive what Jesus did for him on the cross…That revelation spread throughout Europe leading men like Tyndale to lay their lives down to reach others with God’s Word…Glory!!!

Today you have the Bible in your hands, which others have paid for with their very lives and blood: READ IT !!!

*Special Note: The preceding article contains what may be for some disturbing historical facts. However, for the sake of mere political correctness or sensitive religious consciences one cannot rewrite nor water down historical realities to fit the religious and sociological political correct pressures of our day. A more mild view of history may do that and curve to those pressures, but then an important ingredient called truth would be lost. And this, Jesus said, is what “sets us free.”