October 6. William Tyndale. Tyndale was an English scholar, who graduated from Oxford and had mastered seven languages. He became convinced that all people needed and deserved to be able to read the Bible in their own languages.
But translating the Bible into English was punishable by death. While Tyndale worked away at his translation into English, in one day the government executed one woman and six men by burning them at the stake. Their crime was teaching their children the Ten Commandments, the Apostles’ Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer in English. But Tyndale kept on.
In 1526, when Tyndale was 32, he translated and published the first mechanically printed New Testament in English.
The government was so desperate to wipe out the English New Testament that they spent several thousand dollars buying up all the copies and burning them. And they did it twice. But their efforts failed largely because the funds they had spent got funneled back to Tyndale, so he could continue his work. Finally, on this date in 1536, Tyndale was executed by strangling and then publicly burned.
Use frustration to fuel extraordinary acts of courage.
It was the 1500s in Europe, and thanks to the Reformation, people were no longer content to let the corrupt Church and state control them with fear and lies.
Tensions were high in this gathering storm, and late one evening, the dinner table of Sir John and Lady Ann Walsh in Gloucestershire, England, was heaped with exquisite food and surrounded with distinguished guests.
The dinner had begun hours ago, but the guests’ plates were still full. The clergymen in attendance sat with clenched jaws. Again and again, they argued and tried to defend what the Church was doing. But every argument was soundly defeated by the Walsh children’s tutor, Tyndale.
But whatever anger the guests felt toward him, it did not compare with the frustration Tyndale felt. He was an Oxford graduate with two degrees, trained in logic, an ordained priest, and well-read in the Holy Scriptures. He had returned to his native city to tutor the two children of a prominent family.
The concepts he was arguing were plain to see, laid right out in the Bible.
The clergy were the only ones allowed access to the Bible, yet most of them did not even take advantage of this privilege.
“I suffer because the priests be unlearned … yet many of them can scarcely read,” Tyndale wrote.
Why couldn’t they understand? Why didn’t they even want to understand? After all, they were supposed to God’s priests!
The evening did not end well. The guests left still angry, and Lady Walsh had been embarrassed.
She and Sir John reproved Tyndale for his combativeness. The men at their table had many years of clergy experience and were well respected; Tyndale was merely a recently graduated tutor.
Irritated and now discouraged, Tyndale retreated to his room. Even Sir John and Lady Ann couldn’t see his side. They, too, were blinded by titles and prestige.
He sat at his desk, which was covered with the children’s Latin lessons and writing projects.
If only his employers—whom he counted as friends—could understand the true gospel.
He glanced at his copy of Erasmus’s translation of the Greek New Testament. Lady Ann was a great admirer of Erasmus. Tyndale was not. But right there in the preface, Erasmus said of the Scriptures, “And I wish they were translated into all the languages of all people, that they might be read and known.”
Tyndale walked across the room to the fireplace. Using tongs, he gathered the still-hot coals together and added some kindling. Flames shot up. Excitement replaced his frustration, though he knew Lady Ann would never accept an English translation of a Bible passage.
At that time, reading the Bible in English was illegal, but a work by Erasmus—that was something she would read. He would translate Erasmus’s book into English. It would be: Handbook of the Christian Soldier.
Tyndale soon presented the little book, now translated into English, to Lady Ann. As he hoped, she was not only convinced of his translation skills, but also of the words written in the book. The Walshes became life-long supporters of Tyndale and his great Bible-translation project.
At another evening meal, once again, the dinner table atmosphere was strained. Tyndale had made some remarks and infuriated a high-ranking member of the clergy. Tyndale always pointed back to the Scriptures to prove his point. And they were Scriptures the church leader should know, but didn’t.
“We were better to be without God’s law than [to be without] the Pope’s!” the exasperated leader finally shouted and pounded his fist on the table. The leader’s anger had caused him to reveal his true belief.
And Tyndale would not let this blasphemy go. The outburst had cleared away a lot of the religious smoke the clergy had been spouting.
Out of the corner of his eye, Tyndale saw Lady Ann give him a slight nod.
In a loud, firm voice, Tyndale told the blaspheming leader, “I defy the Pope and all his laws, and if God spare my life ere many years, I will cause a boy that driveth the plow, shall know more of the Scripture than thou dost.”
And in that heightened moment of frustration and anger, Tyndale’s resolve to write an English translation of the Bible put on work boots.
“And I am praying that you will put into action the generosity that comes from your faith as you understand and experience all the good things we have in Christ” (Philemon 1:6 NLT).
What situations or people frustrate you? Ask God how you can turn that frustration into something of value that brings life and love. Use frustration to fuel extraordinary acts of courage.
Teems, David Tyndale, The Man Who Gave God an English Voice. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2012.
Tyndale, William. Doctrinal Treatises and Introductions to Different Portions of the Holy Scriptures. Cambridge: The University Press, 1843.
Foxe, John. Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. New Kensington: Whitaker House, 1981.
Story read by: Blake Mattocks
Introduction read by: Daniel Carpenter
Audio production: Joel Carpenter
Editor: Teresa Crumpton, https://authorspark.org/
Project manager: Blake Mattocks
© 2020, 365 Christian Men, LLC. All rights reserved.