In October 1536, in a town outside Brussels, they chained William Tyndale to a stake, strangled him, and burned his body.
He spent most of his last twelve years hiding in Europe, putting the Bible into English. John Foxe recorded what he once told a learned man who argued with him: "If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the scripture than thou dost."
His last words were a prayer. "Lord, open the king of England's eyes." Within a year the king approved an English Bible, and within three every parish church in England was told to have one.
Today is October 31st. Most of the country is buying candy. It's also Reformation Day, and Tyndale is who I think about.
Nobody is building a fire for you or me this morning. What the Bible costs us now is smaller and more ordinary. A look across the break room. A family dinner where you're the only one who still believes all of it.
Here are five things I'll still believe when it costs me something.
1. The Bible is the word of God.
I got saved at twelve, and I was thirty-four the first time I opened a Bible and read it for myself. For twenty-two years I borrowed other men's sermons. Tyndale died so a ploughboy could read it, and I let it sit. Jesus put His words above everything that will ever exist: "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away." (Matthew 24:35)
2. Jesus Christ rose from the dead.
Paul didn't leave room to treat this as a nice idea. "And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain." (1 Corinthians 15:14) Either the tomb was empty or none of this is worth a Sunday morning. The first person He showed Himself to was a woman who had once been full of devils: "Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils." (Mark 16:9)
3. Salvation is by grace through faith.
"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast." (Ephesians 2:8-9) This one offends decent people more than it offends sinners. The man who thinks he's too far gone won't believe it, and the man who thinks he earned his seat doesn't want it.
4. Hell is a real place.
Jesus spoke about it more plainly than anyone in the Book. "And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." (Matthew 10:28) That verse is how a man walks to a stake. Tyndale feared God more than he feared the men holding the chain.
5. Jesus is coming back.
Peter said people would laugh at this one, and they do. "Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation." (2 Peter 3:3-4)
Tyndale paid for the first one with his life. Most of us will pay for all five with some embarrassment, and we still flinch. "Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution." (2 Timothy 3:12)
So do one thing before the trick-or-treaters show up tonight. Open the Bible he died to hand you, turn to the Gospel of John, and read chapter one out loud at your kitchen table. There are twenty-one chapters.
Read one a night and you'll finish before Thanksgiving.
