MAY 2 "DIEING FOR A CAUSE BEYOND YOURSELF"
One of Wycliffe’s followers, John Hus, actively
promoted Wycliffe’s ideas: that people should be permitted to read the Bible in
their own language, and they should oppose the tyranny of the Roman church that
threatened anyone possessing a non-Latin Bible with execution. Hus was burned
at the stake in~1415, with Wycliffe’s manuscript Bibles used as kindling for
the fire. The last words of John Hus were that, “in 100 years, God will
raise up a man whose calls for reform cannot be suppressed.” Almost exactly
100 years later, in~1517, Martin Luther nailed his famous 95 Theses of
Contention (a list of 95 issues of heretical theology and crimes of the Roman
Catholic Church) into the church door at Wittenberg .
The prophecy of Hus had come true! Martin Luther went on to be the first person
to translate and publish the Bible in the commonly-spoken dialect of the German
people; a translation more appealing than previous German Biblical
translations.
Foxe’s Book of Martyrs records that in that
same year, 1517, seven people were burned at the stake by the Roman Catholic
Church for the crime of teaching their children to say the Lord’s Prayer in
English rather than Latin.
Comments
Post a Comment