It Is Written

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Series Code: IIW

Program Code: IIW001474A


01:30 ♪[Theme Music]♪
01:40 ♪[Theme Music]♪
01:49 This is It Is Written, in 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,
02:33 the old and the New Testaments.
02:35 It's made up of 66 individual books.
02:38 Some of them are very short, 2nd John has just 13 verses.
02:42 3rd 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,
03:09 farmers,
03:09 merchants,
03:10 scholars,
03:11 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 1 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 Christian's tested the teachings of the apostles
03:32 by the Old Testament.
03:33 Jesus called God's word the truth in John 17:17.
03:39 Psalm 119 verse nine says,
03:42 "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,
04:02 "Thy word is A lamp unto my feet.
04:05 And a light under my path."
04:09 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.
04:18 If that's true, then imagine a world with no Bible.
04:23 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,
04:36 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
04:49 39 books of the Bible, the Old Testament.
04:53 But several hundred years after
04:55 the founding of the Christian church, by people such as
04:58 Peter and James and John,
05:00 non-biblical traditions and teachings
05:03 started to seep into christianity.
05:06 Some of the plainest teachings of the Bible were ignored.
05:11 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,
05:28 Constantine the great, he became known as,
05:31 converted to christianity.
05:33 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.
05:47 For example, the early Christians
05:49 practiced baptism by immersion,
05:52 but over time, infant baptism found its way into the church.
05:56 The venerating of relics was certainly not practiced by
05:59 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,
06:20 but over time the church began to drift more and more
06:25 away from the word of God.
06:29 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 1,000 years,
06:36 and many non-biblical practices had become deeply entrenched,
06:41 worse than that, the Bible itself had become
06:45 virtually inaccessible to the vast majority of the people.
06:49 In many places, the Bible was banned.
06:52 People were forbidden to read it or to possess it.
06:56 Here in England in Coventry,
06:58 a dozen people became known as the Coventry Martyrs
07:01 after they lost their lives, they were executed,
07:04 because it was known that they disagreed
07:06 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
07:13 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.
07:27 After centuries of drifting from the Bible,
07:30 the Word of God was out of the reach of the people.
07:34 The darkness that existed was almost palpable,
07:38 but here in England heroes stood tall,
07:41 who would cause the light of the Bible to shine again.
07:50 John Wycliffe who was born in around 1328,
07:53 became known as the morning star of the reformation.
07:57 In the 14th century the peasant class were essentially slaves,
08:01 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,
08:10 the pope was receiving five times as much
08:13 gold from the government of
08:15 England as was the king.
08:18 And when it came to the teaching of God's word,
08:20 the people were living in superstition and fear
08:23 as priests as well as traveling monks and Friars
08:26 kept the people in spiritual darkness.
08:30 It was a common practice for the monks
08:32 to sell forgiveness of sin.
08:34 They would live in luxury,
08:36 fleecing the flock instead of feeding the flock.
08:40 The people were kept in darkness by monks
08:42 who were barely less ignorant of the scriptures than they were.
08:46 In 1365 pope Urban the 5th
08:49 demanded that England submit entirely to the authority
08:52 of the church of Rome,
08:54 which would have been an admission on England's part
08:57 that the pope was the legitimate sovereign of England,
09:01 as he lay on what people thought was his death bed,
09:04 the monks urged Wycliffe to recant the things that he
09:07 had said in opposition to them and the church,
09:10 but instead Wycliffe propped himself up and said,
09:14 "I will not die,
09:15 but live and declare the evil deeds of the Friars.
09:20 What Wycliffe went on to do was to translate the Bible
09:25 into the English language of the day.
09:27 At Wycliffe's third trial,
09:30 he met his accusers with these words,
09:32 "With whom think you are you contending,
09:36 with an old man on the brink of the grave?
09:38 No, with truth, truth which is stronger than you,
09:43 and will overcome you."
09:45 Wycliffe was hated by the church.
09:47 After his death, his books were burned
09:51 and even his body was exhumed and burned
09:53 and his ashes were cast into the River Swift near Lutterworth.
09:57 His followers were persecuted,
09:59 and it was enshrined in law that to translate the Bible
10:03 into English without a license was a punishable crime.
10:08 110 years after Wycliffe's death,
10:11 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,
10:21 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,
10:32 without the Bible they couldn't know
10:33 whether the church was right or wrong.
10:37 As Hosea 4 verse 6 says,
10:39 “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”
10:43 By the time William Tyndale was born,
10:45 John Wycliffe's translation of the Bible was out of date,
10:47 because the English language had changed substantially.
10:52 Wycliffe and his followers had been known as Bible men.
10:56 100 plus years later,
10:58 another Bible man was needed.
11:02 Back with more in a moment.
11:03 ♪[Music]♪
11:11 Now here is a question for you,
11:12 can God be trusted?
11:15 And I have the answer for you.
11:16 Can God be trusted?
11:18 That's our offer today it's absolutely free to you.
11:21 Can God be trusted and can the Bible be trusted?
11:24 Call us on (800) 253 3000
11:28 or visit us online at www.itiswritten.com,
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11:36 I'd like you to receive our free offer,
11:38 can God be trusted?
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11:43 >>Announcer: Planning for your financial future
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12:10 ♪[Music]♪
12:19 >>John: Thanks for joining me today on It Is Written.
12:22 William Tyndale was born in Gloucestershire England
12:24 in around the year 1494.
12:27 His family moved here during the wars of the roses.
12:30 A series of wars for control of the English throne
12:32 between the house of York and the house of Lancaster.
12:36 Tyndale was educated at Hartford college in oxford,
12:40 and earned a master's degree in theology in 1515.
12:44 He was fluent in eight languages,
12:47 including Hebrew and Greek,
12:50 the languages in which the Bible was originally written.
12:54 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,
13:08 and according to the plan of the church,
13:10 Tyndale ministered in when he lived right here.
13:14 He had a deep respect for the Bible,
13:16 much like that which Martin Luther had.
13:18 And it wasn't long, and that respect for the word of God
13:22 got Tyndale in a lot of trouble.
13:26 John Fox, the author of the famous Fox's book of martyrs
13:30 reported on a conversation William Tyndale had.
13:34 Someone said to him,
13:35 “We had better be without God's laws, than the pope's.”
13:39 Tyndale replied,
13:40 “I defy the pope and all his laws.
13:43 And if God spares my life ere many years
13:46 I will cause the boy that driveth the plow
13:49 to know more of the scriptures than thou doest.”
13:54 It was here in Little Sudbury that William Tyndale
13:57 felt the call to translate the Bible into English.
14:00 So he left here the following year for London
14:03 to get the support he needed.
14:05 He was looking for the blessing of a certain bishop,
14:07 a man who had praised the work of a dutch theologian Erasmus.
14:11 When Erasmus translated the New Testament,
14:14 but Tyndale didn't get the support he needed.
14:19 Convinced the people of England needed the Bible
14:22 in their own language,
14:24 Tyndale left England in 1524 for Europe,
14:27 and made his way to Wittenberg where Martin Luther was living.
14:32 Luther had translated the New Testament into German
14:35 a couple of years before.
14:37 And now Tyndale set about working on a translation
14:40 of the Bible that would impact Christianity in Great Britain
14:45 and around the world.
14:47 He was helped by a priest named William Roy.
14:50 And within a year or two the translation was finished.
14:54 After some challenges owing to the opposition
14:57 Luther was facing,
14:58 Tyndale had translated the New Testament into English.
15:02 He had the printing done in Worms,
15:05 the city where Martin Luther's trial,
15:06 before emperor Charles V was held.
15:09 More copies were printed
15:10 in what was then the dutch city of Antwerp.
15:13 And in the months that followed,
15:15 those Bibles were smuggled into England and Scotland.
15:20 But smuggling an English language version of the Bible
15:22 across the English channel wasn't an easy matter.
15:26 That bishop who refused his permission to Tyndale
15:29 to translate the Bible into English back then,
15:32 he stood up a lot of opposition to the project.
15:34 In fact, he commanded that Tyndale's Bible be burned.
15:39 Booksellers were banned from selling the book.
15:42 Now burning the Bible in public,
15:43 what that did was generate a lot of sympathy
15:47 for the whole project,
15:48 even among supporters of church and state.
15:51 People didn't like to see the Bible treated in that way,
15:54 burned in the streets.
15:55 Here's what one historian said,
15:57 “The spectacle of the scriptures being put the torch
16:00 provoked controversy even amongst the faithful.”
16:05 But there was worse to come.
16:08 In January of 1529, the catholic cardinal Thomas Wolsey
16:12 condemned Tyndale as a hieratic.
16:15 This attracted the attention of England's King Henry VIII
16:19 who acted swiftly against this new reformer.
16:22 Henry was even more upset with Tyndale,
16:25 because of Tyndale's public disagreement with
16:27 Henry's intention to divorce his wife Catherine of Aragon,
16:30 so that he could marry Anne Boleyn.
16:35 Tyndale contained
16:36 that that Henry VIII's divorce lacked biblical support.
16:40 Henry wasn't open to constructive criticism,
16:42 but fortunately for Tyndale he was in the Netherlands
16:46 and Henry couldn't touch him there.
16:48 He continued to speak out,
16:50 not only about Henry VIII's morals,
16:52 but also about the teachings of the Bible as his writings
16:55 would spread news about his convictions spread also.
17:00 Like Luther, Tyndale maintained that the Bible
17:04 should be the supreme authority
17:05 in matters of faith and practice.
17:08 He also believed strongly in the Bible teaching
17:10 of justification by faith.
17:13 He did not believe that people should
17:15 confess their sins to others.
17:17 And like Luther, he also didn't believe the popular teaching
17:20 that when people die they go straight to heaven or hell.
17:24 Like the other protestant reformers,
17:26 it was Tyndale's purpose to direct men and women
17:29 to the Bible as the rule of faith and practice.
17:32 And even though the protestant reformers didn't always agree
17:35 with each other on any number of subjects,
17:38 what they did do was lift up the Bible as supreme,
17:42 helping believers move towards a clearer understanding
17:46 of God's truth.
17:48 William Tyndale's scholarship had a profound influence
17:51 on the translation of the King James version of the Bible,
17:54 as well as the English language itself.
17:57 Translation of the King James began in 1604
18:00 by order of James 1st, king of England,
18:03 and it was completed in 1611.
18:06 It's estimated that 83% of the New Testament
18:09 and 76% of the Old Testament in the King James comes to us
18:15 from William Tyndale,
18:16 Passover, scapegoat, my brother's keeper,
18:20 the salt of the earth.
18:21 It came to pass.
18:23 The signs of the times,
18:25 let there be light,
18:26 a law unto themselves,
18:29 and much more is the result of Tyndale's scholarship.
18:32 Now, ultimately, Tyndale would meet the same fate
18:37 as the Oxford Martyrs,
18:38 Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer who were burned at the stake
18:42 right here by the Roman church, 20 years after Tyndale died.
18:48 But before Tyndale was put to death,
18:50 he prayed a prayer that would change the world,
18:54 that's coming next.
18:55 ♪[Music]♪
19:02 [Cricketts chirping]
19:06 ♪[Music]♪
19:14 [Camera equipment rattling]
19:17 [Rustling in bushes]
19:19 [People talking]
19:21 [Wind blowing]
19:29 ♪[Music]♪
19:39 ♪[Music]♪
19:47 [Cheering]
19:55 ♪[Music]♪
20:14 >>John: Today I'd like to ask you to help It Is Written
20:16 open the eyes of the blind.
20:18 India has more blind people than any country on earth.
20:21 But simple cataract surgery can make the difference
20:24 between seeing and not seeing.
20:26 Eyes for India is a project that's providing cataract
20:29 surgery for people in desperate need of the gift of sight.
20:33 Please help today.
20:34 Call 800-253-3000.
20:37 Or visit ItIsWritten.com.
20:44 Thanks for joining me on It Is Written.
20:46 In Vilvoorde Belgium,
20:48 on the northern side of the capital city of Belgium Brussels
20:53 is a museum dedicated to the
20:54 life and ministry of William Tyndale.
20:58 It's situated here,
20:59 because this location is only yards from the very spot
21:04 where William Tyndale was executed.
21:07 It might not look like much of anything today,
21:09 but if you'd been here 500 years ago,
21:11 you'd have seen a castle standing on this spot
21:15 right behind me.
21:16 The Senne River just over here runs between Antwerp
21:18 and Brussels making Vilvoorde
21:20 a place of real strategic importance.
21:24 That castle was of a line of fortifications
21:26 and William Tyndale who'd been betrayed
21:28 to the holy Roman empire was kept as a prisoner
21:31 for more than a year in the castle right on this spot.
21:35 Eventually he was brought out and executed right here.
21:40 Before he was put to death, Tyndale prayed one last prayer.
21:45 He said, "Lord, open the king of England's eyes."
21:49 His prayer was answered.
21:52 Within four years of his death,
21:53 four English translations of the bible
21:56 had been published,
21:57 all at the behest of king Henry VIII,
22:00 and all of them based on the work of William Tyndale.
22:06 I've come here to this museum to speak to the experts
22:09 on the life of William Tyndale.
22:12 Why was Tyndale held here in Vilvoorde,
22:15 why here of all places?
22:17 >>Speaker 3: Here in Vilvoorde there was a castle,
22:19 and in that castle there was not so many people,
22:24 so there they know if we put him in Vilvoorde,
22:28 he can, he will stay in prison.
22:32 >>John: What do you think conditions were like
22:34 inside the castle prison?
22:36 >>Speaker 3: Uh, as prisons in the 16th, very difficult.
22:40 We know by his last written letter
22:43 that we have in archives that he asked on the authorities
22:48 to have warm clothes,
22:51 to become candles and to become his work,
22:55 his translation work for having the time now in prison
23:00 and he stayed there for the time he had to stay,
23:04 and hoping that he wouldn't escaped,
23:07 they killed him.
23:08 >>John: So why was the church so opposed to Tyndale
23:12 translating the Bible?
23:14 >>Speaker 3: It's, a, a, a way to eliminate all critical
23:21 actions and reactions in church.
23:23 If you have, uh, uh, uh, your people,
23:29 who can criticize your own way to live as church,
23:34 it's very difficult to stay as church.
23:40 They want to keep their own power,
23:45 and don't give the opportunity on all people to understand
23:52 what was the word God's and not the word of the church.
23:57 >>John: Explain for me William Tyndale's
24:02 contribution to the reformation.
24:05 >>Speaker 3: He was the man who,
24:07 uh, who worked on the English speaking people.
24:12 And it's very important because we had a German translator,
24:16 we had a French translator,
24:17 we had still a Swiss translator.
24:20 We had several translators who makes the new world,
24:24 that's very important to know, because we have still, uh,
24:29 in Europe a big difference between the Latin part
24:33 and the non-Latin part.
24:35 So, the English contribution of William Tyndale
24:38 is not only a contribution in let's say
24:42 the English speaking part of Europe,
24:45 but always contribution on the new world,
24:50 because we would travel from this country to the states,
24:56 and making in states also the new world
24:59 with a own translation.
25:04 And it's very important to know that the new American version
25:11 is the most important translation with the biggest
25:17 part of William Tyndale in it.
25:20 ♪[Music]♪
25:25 >>John: Few people have had so great an impact
25:27 upon the religious faith,
25:28 the cultural heritage,
25:31 even the vocabulary of the English speaking world,
25:34 as William Tyndale.
25:36 Britons voted him 26th
25:38 in the list of the 100 Greatest Britons of all Time.
25:42 And few prayers have been answered as dramatically
25:45 as that prayer Tyndale prayed in the final moments of his life
25:50 when Henry VIII granted permission for the Bible
25:52 to be published in English.
25:54 It unleashed the Bible upon the English speaking world.
25:59 And as a result, the world would never be the same again.
26:03 The core principle of the reformation
26:06 was the role of the word of God in a believer's life.
26:09 Notice, that William Tyndale
26:12 translated the bible into the English
26:13 not long after Johannes Gutenberg
26:16 gave to us the modern printing press,
26:19 which meant the word of God could be distributed to people
26:22 who could read it for themselves,
26:24 understand it for themselves,
26:26 and then follow the leading of the holy spirit in their lives.
26:31 Tyndale's contribution to the reformation was enormous.
26:36 It's one thing to teach or to preach or to write
26:39 as other reformers did.
26:41 It's another thing all together to actually
26:43 give people the Word of God.
26:46 And that's what William Tyndale accomplished.
26:48 Though he's been gone 500 years,
26:51 his influence and his impact lives on in the lives of people
26:55 who continue to be transformed by the power of the Holy Bible.
27:00 ♪[Music]♪
27:07 >>John: I'm John Bradshaw from It Is Written,
27:09 inviting you to join me for 500,
27:13 nine programs produced by it Is Written
27:15 taking you deep into the Reformation.
27:18 This is the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation
27:22 when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door
27:25 of the Castle church in Wittenburg, Germany.
27:28 We'll take you to Wittenburg, and to Belgium,
27:30 to England,
27:31 to Ireland,
27:32 to Rome,
27:33 to the Vatican City,
27:34 and introduce you to the people who created the Reformation,
27:37 who pushed the Reformation forward.
27:39 We'll take you to sites all throughout Europe
27:41 where the reformers lived and, in some cases, died.
27:44 We'll bring you back to the United States
27:46 and take you to a little farm in upstate New York,
27:49 and show you how God spread the Reformation here.
27:52 Don't miss 500.
27:54 You can own the 500 series on DVD.
27:57 Call us on 888-664-5573,
28:02 or visit us online at itiswritten.shop.
28:11 >>John: Let's pray together.
28:13 Our father in heaven,
28:14 we come to you in the name of Jesus and today we are thankful.
28:17 Thankful for those men and women who paid so much
28:20 that we today could hold the Bible in our hands.
28:24 We thank You for the example of William Tyndale,
28:27 a Protestant whose protest delivered to us Your word,
28:32 brought light to this world, and through that light,
28:35 salvation to thousands and millions.
28:40 Lord, don't let us waste what
28:42 these great heroes of history have done.
28:46 Give us grace to hide Your word in our heart,
28:49 to live on Your word and through Your word and in Your word.
28:53 I pray the power of Your word would produce in us
28:55 that what You want to see.
28:57 The character of Jesus and lives lived for Your glory.
29:02 And so keep us and bless us we pray.
29:05 We thank You in Jesus' name,
29:07 Amen.
29:09 Thanks so much for joining me,
29:10 I'm looking forward to seeing you again next time.
29:12 Until then, remember,
29:14 it is written:
29:15 Man shall not live by bread alone,
29:18 but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
29:23 ♪[Theme Music]♪


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Revised 2017-10-17