In 1523, a man named William Tyndale visited the city of London to gain permission to translate the Greek New Testament into English. He visited a Bishop by the name of Cuthbert Tunstall and requested help, but Tyndale was rejected.
It wouldn’t be long before Tyndale self exiled out of England and headed for Europe and onto Germany. Tyndale was a Lutheran, and there he likely met with Reformer Martin Luther who had recently published his own translation of the New Testament into German.
It was at Wittenberg, Germany where Tyndale probably began to expertly translate the New Testament, from Greek into English. By 1525 Tyndale had published his translation using the printing press at Cologne.
He did not have a licence, and his burden lay for his own people and so he was forced to smuggle the New Testament back into England by ship, along the River Thames.
By 1529 Tyndale had been publicly declared a heretic and his books publically burned outside St.Paul’s Cathedral. By 1535 a Judas by the name of Henry Phillips had befriended and betrayed Tyndale and he was captured, imprisioned, condemned, strangled and burned at the stake in 1536.
But it was not the end of Tyndale. That same year his translated work was lifted and used in the very first complete English Bible by Miles Coverdale. Likewise, the translation work was later incorporated into the Geneva Bible and eventually the King James Bible.
Some say as much as 84-90% of the King James New Testament, was the work of William Tyndale.
Most historians today say the English Reformation began with Henry V111’s quest for a male heir, but that is not quite true. The 16th century English Reformation began when Tyndale spread out the Scriptures openly before the people.
But it was never any man who reformed the Church, it was the Holy Spirit who brought about the change. The Lord used honest men to do it, just as He can use honest and God-fearing men today, to do His will.
Simon Peter Sutherland 