Lord, open the King of England’s eyes!
by Peter Jensen, GAFCON:
“Lord, open the King of England’s eyes!”
These, of course, were the last reported words of William Tyndale who was strangled and then burnt in 1536.
His crime? Translating the Bible into English.
His prayer? That King Henry VIII would allow the distribution of the English Bible.
Many a person, not least in today’s world, dies on an unrighteous cause. Courage unto death does not make the cause right.
Tyndale was a brilliant scholar. He not only mastered various languages, he was a master of English. It is possible to produce a plodding and unattractive translation even on the Bible. Tyndale’s translation affected the whole course of English translations down to the present day. Most of the King James or Authorised Version came from him.
He was the Shakespeare of biblical translators.
But was his whole enterprise a folly? To his mind, the Church of his day was keeping back the truth in the cause of a religion which obscured the free grace of the gospel. He believed that the laity deserved to hear and read the Bible for themselves and that when they did so they would hear the gospel and be able to judge for themselves the truth or error in what they were being told.
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