Tyndale and Spurgeon

On New Year's Eve, our family likes to pick a long movie and watch it instead of the dropping ball (a disappointing appearance - dropping balls ought look more like a dropping ball, not a slowly moving ball). This Eve, we watched God's Outlaw, a DVD about William Tyndale who translated the Bible from Greek to English.

William Tyndale lived in England during the time of King Henry VIII. The Reformation was just reaching England and books like those by Luther and English Bibles translated by Wycliffe were not allowed. Tyndale longed for people like plough boys and farmers and other common folk as well as the many unlearned priests to be able to read God's Word for themselves. So he began translating the Bible to English. Only, he needed it published, and that couldn't happen without a license. But he could not get a license because it was many churchmen believed it was wrong for people to read the Bible for themselves. They said the common people would not understand it without all the traditions of the church, that the people had no learning and would use the Scripture wrongly. Because of this, Tyndale left England and had his New Testament printed in Germany and smuggled into England. Of course the authorities were not happy about this, so they had spies after him. He lived a poor and dangerous life for many years. Finally, he was betrayed and summarily martyred.
But the Bible was being read all over England in English. Sometime after Tyndale's death, King Henry VIII ordered great English Bibles to be kept in all the churches and licensed them to be printed. At last the common people could legally keep and read English Bibles.

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Jo was reading Charles Spurgeon's Morning and Evening to me. The evening reading for today was about being renewed in the Scripture every day, feeding ourselves and becoming rooted in God's Word.

"We know the only way to prevent the body from wasting away is to eat meals frequently. It is just as necessary, in order to restore the soul, to feed on the Book of God, listen to the preached Word, and partake of the Lord's table."
Spurgeon, Charles H.Morning and Evening New Updated Edition. Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., March 2005

She and I agreed that we needed to be reminded of this for we have failed too many times.

And then we realized how great William Tyndale's gift was. For by God's grace we are able to read His Scripture and be renewed directly from the Word.

Oh, thanks be to God for raising William Tyndale, for placing us in a country in which Bibles are legal and in abundance, and for drawing us to Himself.
His mercies are everlasting and the truth of the Lord endures forever!

Studying the Scriptures

I'm part of a small group on campus, and we're studying the Gospel of John. As college students, we're all interested in bringing Christ into our daily life and finding new ways to serve Him in the midst of homework, job decisions, and being bombarded with false worldviews. As part of this search for ways to grow in Christ, we thought it would be great if we took a verse from our study and think/incorporate it throughout the week. One guy, Scott, called it "lifework" because he didn't like the word "homework."
So this was the verse we chose a couple of weeks ago:

John 5:39 "You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me," BibleGateway

It is a good challenge to find Christ in every passage I read. It is especially fun to find Christ in the Old Testament, for they testify of Him, but not so explicitly as the New Testament.