It Is Written

A Lamp Unto My Feet

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

Program transcript

Participants:

Series Code: IIW

01:29 ♪[Theme music]
01:40 ♪[Theme music]
01:49 >>John Bradshaw: This is It Is Written.
01:51 I'm John Bradshaw.
01:52 Thanks for joining me.
01:54 In rural England there stands a monument
01:57 to one of the great heroes of the Reformation.
02:01 While he grew up a long way from the center of attention,
02:04 he's remembered as one of the giants of history.
02:09 While others formulated doctrine,
02:11 while others were preaching and teaching,
02:14 this man poured himself into translating and printing.
02:19 His legacy is the Bible.
02:29 The Bible--one volume, two divisions,
02:32 the Old and the New Testaments.
02:35 It's made up of 66 individual books.
02:38 Some of them are very short: 2 John has just 13 verses;
02:42 3 John has one more verse, but fewer words;
02:46 the book of Jude, only 25 verses.
02:50 Some books of the Bible are very long.
02:52 The book of Psalms has 150 chapters
02:54 including the Bible's longest chapter, Psalm 119.
03:00 There are 1,189 chapters in the Bible,
03:04 more than three-quarters of a million words.
03:07 It was written by shepherds, farmers, merchants,
03:10 scholars, statesmen, and kings,
03:13 the majority of whom had never met each other.
03:16 And the Bible says some pretty remarkable things about itself.
03:20 First Peter 1:23 says that people are "born again...
03:25 through the word of God which lives and abides forever."
03:29 The early Christians tested the teachings of the apostles
03:31 by the Old Testament.
03:33 Jesus called God's Word the truth in John 17:17.
03:39 Psalm 119, verse 9 says,
03:41 "How can a young man cleanse his way?
03:45 By taking heed according to Your word."
03:48 Same chapter, verse 130:
03:50 "The entrance of Your words gives light;
03:54 it gives understanding to the simple."
03:58 And David said on the 105th verse of the same psalm,
04:01 "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet,
04:05 and a light unto my path."
04:08 So if this is true, that the Bible is the truth,
04:13 that it cleanses,
04:14 that people are born again by it,
04:16 that it's a lamp and a light--
04:17 if that's true, then imagine a world with no Bible.
04:25 It's not that hard to imagine.
04:29 Back in Jesus' day, the scriptures--and remember,
04:32 in Christ's day they only had the Old Testament scriptures--
04:35 well, back then the scriptures formed the framework
04:39 or the basis for society.
04:41 The Word of God was widely taught,
04:43 and people had a good working knowledge
04:46 of what we today would recognize as the first 39 books
04:50 of the Bible-- the Old Testament.
04:53 But several hundred years
04:54 after the founding of the Christian church
04:57 by people such as Peter and James and John,
05:00 non-biblical traditions and teachings
05:03 started to seep into Christianity.
05:05 Some of the plainest teachings of the Bible were ignored.
05:10 If the entrance of God's Word gives light,
05:14 then the obscuring of God's Word
05:16 led to a period of some real spiritual darkness.
05:22 How did it happen?
05:23 In the 4th century AD, the Roman emperor Constantine,
05:27 "Constantine the Great" he became known as,
05:30 converted to Christianity.
05:32 It was a nominal conversion,
05:35 and Constantine never really abandoned paganism.
05:39 As a result, a number of pagan practices
05:42 became established within the Christian faith.
05:46 For example, the early Christians
05:49 practiced baptism by immersion,
05:51 but over time, infant baptism found its way into the church.
05:56 The venerating of relics was certainly not practiced
05:58 by the early Christians, but that too found its way
06:01 into Christianity shortly after Constantine was baptized.
06:04 The early Christians did not confess their sins to a priest,
06:09 but that found its way into church practice, as well.
06:12 Now, there were some Christians who clung to the Bible
06:17 as their rule of faith and practice,
06:19 but over time the church began to drift more and more
06:25 away from the Word of God.
06:27 Now, come down to the 16th century--
06:31 by this time, the ruling church had been in power
06:34 for more than a thousand years,
06:35 and many non-biblical practices had become deeply entrenched.
06:41 Worse than that, the Bible itself had become
06:44 virtually inaccessible to the vast majority of the people.
06:49 In many places, the Bible was banned.
06:51 People were forbidden to read it or to possess it.
06:55 Here in England in Coventry,
06:57 a dozen people became known as the Coventry Martyrs
07:01 after they lost their lives;
07:02 they were executed because it was known that they disagreed
07:05 with some of the practices of the established church.
07:08 One of them was a woman, who was found to have in her possession
07:12 a handwritten copy of the Lord's Prayer,
07:15 the Ten Commandments, and the Apostles' Creed.
07:18 She was burned at the stake for that.
07:22 There are hundreds of stories just like it, thousands even.
07:26 After centuries of drifting from the Bible,
07:30 the Word of God was out of the reach of the people.
07:33 The darkness that existed was almost palpable,
07:37 but here in England, heroes stood tall,
07:41 who would cause the light of the Bible to shine again.
07:49 John Wycliffe, who was born in around 1328,
07:53 became known as "the Morning Star of the Reformation."
07:56 In the 14th century, the peasant class were essentially slaves,
08:00 and the influence of the ruling church was enormous.
08:04 The Catholic Church essentially controlled the country,
08:08 and by later in the 14th century,
08:09 the pope was receiving five times as much gold
08:13 from the government of England as was the king.
08:17 And when it came to the teaching of God's Word,
08:19 the people were living in superstition and fear,
08:22 as priests, as well as traveling monks and friars,
08:26 kept the people in spiritual darkness.
08:29 It was a common practice for the monks
08:32 to sell forgiveness of sin.
08:34 They would live in luxury,
08:35 fleecing the flock instead of feeding the flock.
08:39 The people were kept in darkness by monks
08:41 who were barely less ignorant of the Scriptures than they were.
08:45 In 1365, Pope Urban V demanded that England submit entirely
08:51 to the authority of the church of Rome,
08:53 which would have been an admission on England's part
08:56 that the pope was the legitimate sovereign of England.
09:01 As he lay on what people thought was his death bed,
09:03 the monks urged Wycliffe to recant the things
09:06 that he had said in opposition to them and the church,
09:09 but instead Wycliffe propped himself up and said,
09:13 "I will not die,
09:14 but live and declare the evil deeds of the friars."
09:19 What Wycliffe went on to do was to translate the Bible
09:24 into the English language of the day.
09:27 At Wycliffe's third trial,
09:29 he met his accusers with these words:
09:32 "With whom, think you, are you contending?
09:35 With an old man on the brink of the grave?
09:37 No! With truth! Truth which is stronger than you,
09:42 and will overcome you."
09:44 Wycliffe was hated by the church.
09:46 After his death, his books were burned,
09:50 and even his body was exhumed and burned,
09:53 and his ashes were cast into the River Swift near Lutterworth.
09:56 His followers were persecuted,
09:59 and it was enshrined in law that to translate the Bible
10:02 into English without a license was a punishable crime.
10:08 A hundred and ten years after Wycliffe's death,
10:10 another man came on the scene,
10:12 another Bible translator.
10:15 When William Tyndale was born in 1494,
10:18 superstition controlled people's lives,
10:20 kings could sentence people to death for petty reasons,
10:24 popes could issue decrees that had no basis in Scripture,
10:28 and yet people accepted that as the will of God for their lives.
10:31 Without the Bible, they couldn't know
10:32 whether the church was right or wrong.
10:36 As Hosea 4, verse 6 says,
10:38 "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge."
10:42 By the time William Tyndale was born,
10:44 John Wycliffe's translation of the Bible was out-of-date
10:47 because the English language had changed substantially.
10:51 Wycliffe and his followers had been known as "Bible men."
10:55 One-hundred-plus years later, another Bible man was needed.
11:01 Back with more in a moment.
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12:10 ♪[Music]
12:18 >>John Bradhsaw: Thanks for joining me today
12:19 on It Is Written.
12:21 William Tyndale was born in Gloucestershire, England,
12:24 in around the year 1494.
12:26 His family moved here during the Wars of the Roses,
12:29 a series of wars for control of the English throne
12:32 between the house of York and the house of Lancaster.
12:35 Tyndale was educated at Hartford College in Oxford
12:39 and earned a master's degree in theology in 1515.
12:44 He was fluent in eight languages,
12:46 including Hebrew and Greek,
12:49 the languages in which the Bible was originally written.
12:53 In 1521, he moved here to the little village of little Sudbury
12:59 where he became the chaplain in the home of Sir John Walsh.
13:03 In fact, this church is built from the actual stones
13:07 and according to the plan of the church
13:09 Tyndale ministered in when he lived right here.
13:13 He had a deep respect for the Bible,
13:15 much like that which Martin Luther had.
13:18 And it wasn't long and that respect for the Word of God
13:21 got Tyndale in a lot of trouble.
13:25 John Foxe, the author of the famous "Foxe's Book of Martyrs,"
13:29 reported on a conversation William Tyndale had.
13:33 Someone said to him,
13:34 "We had better be without God's laws than the pope's."
13:38 Tyndale replied,
13:39 “I defy the pope and all his laws;
13:43 and if God spares my life,
13:44 ere many years, I will cause the boy that driveth the plow
13:48 to know more of the Scriptures than thou dost.”
13:52 It was here in little Sudbury that William Tyndale
13:56 felt the call to translate the Bible into English.
13:59 So he left here the following year for London
14:02 to get the support he needed.
14:04 He was looking for the blessing of a certain bishop,
14:07 a man who had praised the work of the Dutch theologian Erasmus
14:10 when Erasmus translated the New Testament.
14:13 But Tyndale didn't get the support he needed.
14:18 Convinced the people of England needed the Bible
14:21 in their own language,
14:23 Tyndale left England in 1524 for Europe,
14:26 and made his way to Wittenberg, where Martin Luther was living.
14:31 Luther had translated the New Testament into German
14:34 a couple of years before.
14:36 And now Tyndale set about working on a translation
14:39 of the Bible that would impact Christianity in Great Britain
14:44 and around the world.
14:46 He was helped by a priest named William Roy,
14:49 and within a year or two the translation was finished.
14:53 After some challenges,
14:54 owing to the opposition Luther was facing,
14:57 Tyndale had translated the New Testament into English.
15:01 He had the printing done in Worms,
15:04 the city where Martin Luther's trial
15:05 before Emperor Charles V was held.
15:08 More copies were printed
15:09 in what was then the Dutch city of Antwerp.
15:12 And in the months that followed,
15:14 those Bibles were smuggled into England and Scotland.
15:19 But smuggling an English language version of the Bible
15:21 across the English Channel wasn't an easy matter.
15:25 That bishop who refused his permission to Tyndale
15:28 to translate the Bible into English back then?
15:31 He stood up a lot of opposition to the project;
15:33 in fact, he commanded that Tyndale's Bible be burned.
15:38 Booksellers were banned from selling the book.
15:41 Now, burning the Bible in public--
15:42 what that did was generate a lot of sympathy
15:45 for the whole project,
15:47 even among supporters of church and state.
15:50 People didn't like to see the Bible treated in that way,
15:52 burned in the streets.
15:54 Here's what one historian said:
15:56 "The spectacle of the Scriptures being put to the torch...
15:59 provoked controversy even amongst the faithful."
16:04 But there was worse to come.
16:07 In January of 1529, the Catholic cardinal Thomas Wolsey
16:11 condemned Tyndale as a heretic.
16:14 This attracted the attention of England's King Henry VIII,
16:18 who acted swiftly against this new reformer.
16:21 Henry was even more upset with Tyndale
16:24 because of Tyndale's public disagreement
16:25 with Henry's intention to divorce his wife,
16:28 Catherine of Aragon, so that he could marry Anne Boleyn.
16:34 Tyndale contended that Henry VIII's divorce
16:37 lacked biblical support.
16:39 Henry wasn't open to constructive criticism,
16:41 but fortunately for Tyndale, he was in the Netherlands,
16:45 and Henry couldn't touch him there.
16:47 He continued to speak out,
16:49 not only about Henry VIII's morals,
16:51 but also about the teachings of the Bible.
16:53 As his writings were spread,
16:55 news about his convictions spread also.
16:59 Like Luther, Tyndale maintained that the Bible should be
17:03 the supreme authority in matters of faith and practice.
17:07 He also believed strongly in the Bible teaching
17:09 of justification by faith.
17:12 He did not believe
17:13 that people should confess their sins to others.
17:16 And like Luther, he also didn't believe the popular teaching
17:19 that when people die, they go straight to heaven or hell.
17:23 Like the other Protestant reformers,
17:25 it was Tyndale's purpose to direct men and women
17:28 to the Bible as their rule of faith and practice.
17:31 And even though the Protestant reformers didn't always agree
17:34 with each other on any number of subjects,
17:37 what they did do was lift up the Bible as supreme,
17:41 helping believers move towards a clearer understanding
17:45 of God's truth.
17:47 William Tyndale's scholarship had a profound influence
17:50 on the translation of the King James Version of the Bible,
17:53 as well as on the English language itself.
17:56 Translation of the King James began in 1604
17:59 by order of James I, king of England,
18:02 and it was completed in 1611.
18:04 It's estimated that 83 percent of the New Testament
18:08 and 76 percent of the Old Testament in the King James
18:12 comes to us from William Tyndale.
18:15 "Passover," "scapegoat," "my brother's keeper,"
18:18 "the salt of the earth," "it came to pass,"
18:21 "the signs of the times," "let there be light,"
18:25 "a law unto themselves,"
18:27 and much more is the result of Tyndale's scholarship.
18:31 Now, ultimately, Tyndale would meet the same fate
18:35 as the Oxford Martyrs--
18:37 Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, who were burned at the stake,
18:41 right here, by the Roman church, 20 years after Tyndale died.
18:46 But before Tyndale was put to death,
18:49 he prayed a prayer that would change the world.
18:53 That's coming next.
18:54 ♪[Music]
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20:12 >>John Bradshaw: Today I'd like to ask you
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20:41 ♪[Music]
20:42 >>John Bradshaw: Thanks for joining me on It Is Written.
20:45 In Vilvoorde, Belgium, on the northern side
20:48 of the capital city of Belgium--Brussels--
20:52 is a museum dedicated to the life and ministry
20:54 of William Tyndale.
20:57 It's situated here because this location
20:59 is only yards from the very spot
21:03 where William Tyndale was executed.
21:05 It might not look like much of anything today,
21:07 but if you'd been here 500 years ago,
21:10 you'd have seen a castle standing on this spot
21:13 right behind me.
21:15 The Senne River, just over here,
21:16 runs between Antwerp and Brussels,
21:18 making Vilvoorde a place of real strategic importance.
21:22 That castle was one of a line of fortifications,
21:25 and William Tyndale, who'd been betrayed
21:27 to the Holy Roman Empire, was kept as a prisoner
21:30 for more than a year in the castle right on this spot.
21:34 Eventually he was brought out and executed right here.
21:38 Before he was put to death, Tyndale prayed one last prayer.
21:43 He said, "Lord, open the king of England's eyes."
21:48 His prayer was answered.
21:50 Within four years of his death,
21:52 four English translations of the Bible had been published,
21:55 all at the behest of King Henry VIII,
21:58 and all of them based on the work of William Tyndale.
22:05 I've come here to this museum to speak to the experts
22:08 on the life of William Tyndale.
22:11 Why was Tyndale held here in Vilvoorde?
22:14 Why here of all places?
22:16 >>Dr. Willy Willems: Here in Vilvoorde there was a castle,
22:18 and in that castle
22:19 there was not so many people.
22:22 So, there they know,
22:25 if we put him in Vilvoorde,
22:27 he can, he will stay in prison.
22:31 >>John: What do you think conditions were like
22:33 inside the castle prison?
22:34 >>Dr. Willems: Oh, as prisons in the 16th, very difficult.
22:38 We know by, uh, his last written letter
22:42 that we have in archives
22:44 that he asked on the authorities to have,
22:48 uh, warm clothes,
22:50 to bring him candles and to bring him his work,
22:53 his translation work, for having the time now in prison.
22:59 And he stayed there for the time he had to stay.
23:03 And hoping that he wouldn't escape, they killed him.
23:08 >>John: So why was the church so opposed to Tyndale
23:11 translating the Bible?
23:12 >>Dr. Willems: It's a, a, a way to eliminate
23:17 all critical action and reactions in church.
23:23 If you have, uh, uh, uh, your people,
23:27 who can criticize your own way to live as a church,
23:33 it's very difficult to stay as a church.
23:38 They want to keep their own power
23:44 and don't give the opportunity on all people to understand
23:51 what was the Word, God's, and not the word of the church.
23:56 >>John: Explain for me
23:58 William Tyndale's contribution to the Reformation.
24:04 >>Dr. Willems: He was the man who, who, uh,
24:06 who worked on the English-speaking people.
24:10 And that's very important
24:12 because we had a German translator;
24:14 we had a French translator;
24:15 we had still a Swiss translator.
24:18 We had several translators who makes the New World.
24:22 That's very important to know
24:24 because we have still, uh, in Europe, a big difference
24:30 between the Latin part and the non-Latin part.
24:34 So, the English contribution of William Tyndale
24:37 is not only a contribution in,
24:40 let's say, the English-speaking part of Europe,
24:44 but always a contribution on the New World
24:49 because we will travel from this country to the States,
24:54 and making in States, also the New World,
24:58 with a known translation.
25:03 And it's very important to know that the New American Version
25:09 is the most important translation
25:14 with the biggest part of William Tyndale in it.
25:18 ♪[Music]
25:23 >>John: Few people have had so great an impact
25:26 upon the religious faith, the cultural heritage,
25:29 even the vocabulary of the English-speaking world,
25:33 as William Tyndale.
25:34 Britons voted him 26th
25:37 in the list of the "100 Greatest Britons" of all time.
25:41 And few prayers have been answered as dramatically
25:44 as that prayer Tyndale prayed
25:46 in the final moments of his life.
25:48 When Henry VIII granted permission for the Bible
25:51 to be published in English,
25:53 it unleashed the Bible upon the English-speaking world.
25:57 And as a result, the world would never be the same again.
26:02 The core principle of the Reformation
26:04 was the role of the Word of God in a believer's life.
26:08 Notice that William Tyndale translated the Bible
26:11 into English not long after Johannes Gutenberg
26:14 gave to us the modern printing press,
26:17 which meant the Word of God could be distributed to people
26:21 who could read it for themselves,
26:23 understand it for themselves,
26:24 and then follow the leading of the Holy Spirit in their lives.
26:30 Tyndale's contribution to the Reformation was enormous.
26:34 It's one thing to teach or to preach or to write,
26:37 as other reformers did.
26:39 It's another thing altogether to actually give people
26:42 the Word of God.
26:44 And that's what William Tyndale accomplished.
26:47 Though he's been gone 500 years,
26:49 his influence and his impact lives on in the lives of people
26:53 who continue to be transformed by the power of the Holy Bible.
26:58 ♪[Music]
27:05 >>John: I'm John Bradshaw from It Is Written,
27:07 inviting you to join me for "500,"
27:11 nine programs produced by It Is Written,
27:13 taking you deep into the Reformation.
27:17 This is the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation
27:21 when Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses
27:24 to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenburg, Germany.
27:26 We'll take you to Wittenburg,
27:27 and to Belgium, to England, to Ireland,
27:31 to Rome, to the Vatican City,
27:33 and introduce you to the people who created the Reformation,
27:36 who pushed the Reformation forward.
27:38 We'll take you to sites all throughout Europe
27:40 where the reformers lived and, in some cases, died.
27:42 We'll bring you back to the United States
27:44 and take you to a little farm in upstate New York
27:47 and show you how God spread the Reformation here.
27:50 Don't miss "500."
27:52 You can own the "500" series on DVD.
27:55 Call us on 888-664-5573,
28:00 or visit us online at itiswritten.shop.
28:09 >>John Bradshaw: Let's pray together.
28:11 Our Father in heaven, we come to you in the name of Jesus,
28:13 and today we are thankful.
28:15 Thankful for those men and women who paid so much
28:19 that we today could hold the Bible in our hands.
28:22 We thank You for the example of William Tyndale,
28:25 a Protestant whose protest delivered to us Your Word,
28:30 brought light to this world, and through that light,
28:34 salvation to thousands and millions.
28:38 Lord, don't let us waste
28:40 what these great heroes of history have done.
28:44 Give us grace to hide Your Word in our heart,
28:47 to live on Your Word and through Your Word and in Your Word.
28:51 I pray the power of Your Word would produce in us
28:54 that what You want to see:
28:55 the character of Jesus and lives lived for Your glory.
29:01 And so keep us and bless us, we pray.
29:03 We thank You in Jesus' name,
29:05 Amen.
29:07 Thanks so much for joining me.
29:08 I'm looking forward to seeing you again next time.
29:10 Until then, remember:
29:12 "It is written:
29:14 'Man shall not live by bread alone,
29:16 but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.'"
29:21 ♪[Theme music]

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Revised 2018-10-16