Sunday, October 03, 2010

Fire in the Bones: William Tyndale--Martyr, Father of the English Bible by S. Michael Wilcox

This is William Tyndale's biography presented to an LDS audience. Interesting. I never really realized that the bible was only in Latin and normal people, like me, wouldn't have had access to the scriptures. That would be weird.
Henry the 8th is in charge during the 1500's. Apostasy is still going strong. The priests are the ones that call the shots when it comes to repentance and they make money on all kinds of church things.
Tyndale had a dream to get the bible into everyone's hands and have it in English so they could read it on their own. This makes greedy priests mad. They wouldn't need to be used anymore. So they decide to burn all the heretics.
Well, Tyndale takes off to Germany and other places to hide out and translate the New Testament. He gets it published and smuggled into England where it is in high demand. Through the black market it is sold but tons of the books are confiscated and burned. And the people smuggling them and found with them are sometimes burned too.
Tyndale keeps trying and gets part of the old testament translated too (from Hebrew to English).
It is said that 90% of the King James Version of the Bible was from Tyndale's early translations. (This is the bible that I use.) He risked his life and devoted it to the cause for all of us to be able to understand and interpret the bible personally from our own reading of the scriptures.
He was eventually betrayed, imprisoned, and burned at the stake. He was a very humble man that couldn't help but share the message of Christ with everyone even if it meant going against traditions and the King. He was very brave and I would like to thank him someday for his sacrifice.

Whole Book

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