WILLIAM TYNDALE

     William Tyndale's martyrdom, October 6, 1536, was one of many shameful days for mankind. As we examine history let us remember the cost of the freedoms we enjoy today. And never forget, the same wicked spirit of men that existed then is the alive and well today. And Bible prophecy herald's the call to our preparation that we be able to stand with those heroes for Jesus Christ who "loved not their lives unto death."

     The brutality seen in religion is exemplary of man’s greatest sin: his inhumanity to his fellow man. Atheists exult in this history while many themselves are guilty of lying, stealing, and murdering no less than those they have exalted themselves above. 1,000,000 abortions every year: legal sodomy and perversion of all sorts are allowed, encouraged, and legislated into law. Not to mention the brutality of prison life, mental wards, and knife happy surgeons. The plethora of sins allowed in this world literally nauseate the soul.

     But today’s religions are no exception to this scale of abuse. In fact the sin in the church is so prevalent Christ says to those who lead the religious apostasy: “I will spue thee out of my mouth.” Rev.3:16. The only thing holding back these religious leaders is opportunity, just as with any common criminal. GOD’S Word declares that all men will be judged by the sins they would have committed had they been given opportunity, as it is written: “Behold, thou hast spoken and done evil things as thou couldest.” Christ carried this principle in His day: “But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” Jer.3:5; Matt.5:28.

     This conflict between good and evil seen among us [and within us (Rom.7)] is because there are two forces at work; and each contends for the supremacy of every mind and heart. One works to restore the eternal life that was lost through sin: providing security, joy and tranquility for all life. While the other works to maim, afflict, and ultimately destroy all life. Only GOD has held back the forces of satanic origin. Wolves in sheep's clothing (Matt.7:15) are merely waiting for GOD to remove His restraining hand to carry out their utterly-luciferian agenda.

     But within the billowing waves of sin, America was designed to be a safe harbor for righteousness, holding back the tide of the evils of tyranny. And measures were taken by our founders to establish a foothold in accomplishing this grand objective. But now that our founder’s best intentions have been replaced with willful ignorance, greed, arrogance and oppression (all masquerading in virtue), our inevitable future is clear. America’s ruin is imminent as evidenced by all that has and is taking place.

     As the Reformation was needed to bring reform to the luciferian church of Rome, so another Reformation is needed to restore the authority of the United States Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence: all of which has historically been condemned by Rome. Without a reformation of America the tyrants in this land will destroy the nation. And Bible prophecy insists that they will one day bring this nation to its knees, but not in prayer or humility before GOD, but rather tyranny, desperation, and ruin (Rev.13:11-17). But we’re also told that GOD is holding back the winds of strife until His children are numbered, sealed and ready for the final conflict (Rev.7:1-3). And there are many men and women today who are heaven’s agents to preserve our nation. In every age there have been great men and women who paved the way for the liberties of Christ: the freedom that we relish and hold sacred today. Among them was an absolute giant in his character: William Tyndale.

     William Tyndale (c.1494–1536) holds the heavenly distinction of being the first man to ever print the New Testament in the English language that he personally translated from the Greek Text of the great Christian scholar, Lucian of Antioch (c.250-310 A.D.). Lucian holds the heavenly distinction of editing the Apostles’ original Greek manuscripts, and producing a complete Bible it was held by the Greek Orthodox Church throughout the centuries. The Greek text was restored to Europe through the legendary work of the Dutch scholar, Erasmus. Of Erasmus it is said, that “during his mature years in the earlier part of the sixteenth century, was the intellectual dictator of Europe. …Europe was rocked end to end by his books which exposed the ignorance of the monks, the superstitions of the priesthood, the bigotry, and the childish and coarse religion of the day.”—Benjamin Wilkinson, Our Authorized Version Vindicated, p.53. It was this pathetic ignorance in the Roman church that led to Tyndale’s famous vow when he stood before the papists: “If God spare my life, ere many years, I will cause a boy that driveth a plough shall know more of the Scripture than thou doest.” (Please remember, that this was an age when fathers were burned at the stake for teaching their children the Lord’s Prayer.)

     Tyndale also went on to first translate much of the Old Testament from the original Hebrew into English. But he was executed in 1536 for the "crime" of printing the scriptures in English before he could personally complete the printing of an entire Bible. But his heaven-led friends Myles Coverdale, and John "Thomas Matthew" Rogers, managed to evade arrest and publish entire Bibles in the English language for the first time, and within one year of Tyndale's death. This opened the floodgates of religious learning in England, expanding the morality, judgment and general intellect. It is a proven academic fact that children who read the Middle-English King James and Geneva Bibles their academic scores increase greatly.

     William himself was a great English scholar. A man named Herman Bushius, a friend of Erasmus spoke of Tyndale as “so skilled in seven languages, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, English, French, that whichever he spoke you would suppose it his native tongue.”—Demaus, Life of Tyndale, p.130. William became a leading figure in the Protestant Reformation in the years leading up to his execution. He was influenced by the work of Erasmus of whom he was his student at the University of Cambridge. While a number of partial and incomplete translations had been made from the seventh century onward, the grass-roots spread of Wycliffe's Bible resulted in a death sentence for any unlicensed possession of Scripture in English—even though all the major European languages had been translated and made available.

     Tyndale's translation was the first English Bible to draw directly from Hebrew and Greek texts, the first English one to take advantage of the printing press, and first of the new English Bibles of the now unstoppable Reformation. It was taken to be a direct challenge to the domination of both the Roman Catholic Church and English Laws to maintain church rulings. In 1530, Tyndale also wrote The Practyse of Prelates, opposing Henry VIII's divorce on the grounds that it contravened Scripture.

     Tyndale had to learn Hebrew in Germany due to England's active Edict of Expulsion against the Jews. He worked in an age where Greek was available to the European scholarly community for the first time in centuries. Erasmus compiled and edited Greek Scriptures into the Textus Receptus—ironically, to improve upon the Latin Vulgate—following the Renaissance-fueling Fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the dispersion of Greek-speaking intellectuals and texts into a Europe which previously had access to none. Sharing Erasmus' translation ideals, Tyndale took the ill-regarded, unpopular and awkward Middle-English "vulgar" tongue, improved upon it using Greek and Hebrew syntaxes and idioms, and formed an Early Modern English basis that Shakespeare and others would later follow and build upon as Tyndale-inspired vernacular forms took over. So the atheistic assertion that is commonly taught in academia that Shakespeare is the father of the Middle-English language is a blatant refusal of historical fact. How many, both in and out of the church, deny the Glory due to GOD in Shepherding the Flock of the Church of “his only begotten Son!”

     When a copy of Tyndale’s, "The Obedience of a Christian Man" fell into the hands of Henry VIII, the king then separated the Church in England from the Roman Catholic Church (1534).

     In 1535, Tyndale was arrested and jailed in the castle of Vilvoorde (Filford) outside Brussels for over a year. In 1536 he was convicted of heresy and executed by strangulation, after which his body was burnt at the stake. His dying request that the King of England's eyes would be opened seemed to find its fulfillment just two years later with Henry's authorization of The Great Bible for the Church of England—which was largely Tyndale's own work. Hence, the Tyndale Bible, as it was known, continued to play a key role in spreading Reformation ideas across the English-speaking world and eventually, on the global British Empire. His version also worked prominently into the Geneva Bible, which was taken to the New World to Jamestown in 1607, and on the Mayflower in 1620. Notably, in 1611, the 54 independent scholars who created the King James Version, drew significantly from Tyndale, as well as the translation that descended from the Waldensian Bible, the Itala, the “Latin Received Text” which was the original Vulgate, long before Jerome’s corrupt Latin manuscript.

“For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it.” Mk.8:35.