Our current series Think Different is designed to help us as followers of Jesus to navigate our current culture, seeking to figure out how to stand in the truth of the Gospel while at the same time being people of grace. We can feel fairly alone in this pursuit, believing that these are the worst days and that nobody has ever had times like this. Truth is that at every point in church history there has always been a cultural pressure put on Christianity calling the church to abandon some core belief in order to accommodate the culture. And at every moment God has sent his church key leaders who have faithfully held to the truth of the Gospel proclaiming it to the world in which they lived. Many of these people endured hardship and persecution as they sought to remain faithful to the Scriptures and their mission in the world. During this series one of the things we want to do is to introduce our church to some of these people. In the sermon we will share a little bit about the individuals, but also want to use the blog to give more information. We will be sharing articles from the Christian History website that contain biographical sketches from the book 131 Christians Everyone Ought to Know.
This week we were introduced to William Tyndale (1494-1536). Tyndale spent his life seeking to translate the Bible into English so people could have the Bible in their own language, rather than only having it in Latin (the language used by the church, but unknown to common people). He was even to bold as to state about the Pope at the time, “If God spare my life, ere many years, I will cause a boy who drives a plow to know more of the Scriptures than you do.” Tyndale also gave his life over this issue, as he was betrayed by friends then tried as a heretic and burned at the stake. His heresy, the desire to make the Scriptures accessible to everyone. Read his story here.