Sunday School | The Translation of Scripture

Glad you guys are here. If you haven't been here, if you got drawn in by my little Tyndale teaser—we are, I don't know, maybe a third of the way through this kind of expansive study of Christian doctrine. There are basically ten Christian doctrines, and if we want to try to organize what we believe, we're just walking through them one at a time. So we've done all three persons of the Trinity, man, and now we're on Bibles. Or about—maybe that's about—we're about halfway. Maybe we'll see how the whole thing turns out.

In this series that we're doing, as we got into the study of the scriptures just called bibliology, we've talked about how the scriptures were formed or what are the attributes of God's word. And once we do all that, we end up really describing the original version of the Bible—the actual copy of Genesis that Moses wrote or the actual copy of Romans that Paul wrote. And then once we've done that, you've got to ask a couple of different questions: is what we have today a faithful approximation of what was written then?

And in that, there are two sub-questions. One: has it been transmitted through the centuries? Meaning, if we look at a Greek manuscript—we don't have the original copy of John—but is what we have an accurate reflection of what John really wrote? That's called transmission. And then the second question is about translation: do we have in English a reasonable understanding of what Paul or Peter or David or Moses meant us to understand?

We were talking about that, and I realized there's just an opportunity to take a little bit of a pause on the more academic study of how we understand these things and just look at the story of how the Bible came to us in English. And you guys, this is a fun story. I hope you will agree. In the next half hour or so, it's a really great story.

William Tyndale

There are a couple of guys that could be the hero of this story. And if we really want to be honest about it, John Wycliffe would be the earliest guy. But we're not going to talk about Wycliffe. Wycliffe's kind of a precursor to the story we want to tell. I want to tell you about the life of a guy named William Tyndale.

So I'm just curious, as a starting point: is Tyndale a familiar name to you? What's in your general knowledge about him? Give me a couple of facts about William Tyndale, if whatever you happen to know about him.

English contemporary of Martin Luther. Very good. Okay, so this puts him in the 1500s. So as the Protestant Reformation is taking place across Europe—it was going on in like every country basically, but led under different people—you've got Calvin leading in Geneva, you've got Luther leading in Germany, and you don't really have Tyndale leading per se in England. Who was the leader of the English Reformation?

Anglicans. We are the least Anglican of all Anglicans in the universe. Cranmer, right? Thomas Cranmer was the leader of the English Reformation. So our guy Tyndale was a contemporary of Luther in Germany, probably never met Luther, a contemporary of Cranmer in England, and we actually don't have any evidence that they met. But they were working on the exact same thing at the exact same time. I think it must be the case that they had heard of each other, if they hadn't actually met. But we don't have any correspondence between them. Okay, so that's the time period—1500s.

What else do you guys know about Tyndale? If anything?

Very good. Okay, so this is actually an important point. The Bible was written initially—the Old Testament is written in Hebrew and Aramaic, mostly Hebrew, and the New Testament is written in Greek. And then centuries in, the whole thing was translated into Latin, which would have been the lingua franca of the place and time. And so that's called the Vulgate—"vulgar" as in common. So Latin was the thing, and so when people would translate, you never want to translate a translation of a translation if you can skip back to the original and do that. That's going to be an important thing, and that is what Tyndale ultimately does. I'll tell you more about how we get there in a second.

Anything else Tyndale related?

His name is printed. Okay, so if you know, like the Bible translation organization that does so much work is called Wycliffe, right? And we have Bible publishers named after Tyndale because these guys were the beginning, really, of the translation of the scriptures. Massive, massive significance.

Okay, so Tyndale was an academic. He was a Christian. He was part of the Roman Church, the Catholic Church, which was the church. Well, there were two—there was also the Orthodox Church. But in Europe, if you were a Christian, you were necessarily part of the Roman church, right?

Erasmus was an academic, and what that meant was that he was able to read the Bible in Greek—he could read the original thing. And he realized that what he was reading and studying—he could read Erasmus's Greek New Testament—did not line up with the things that were being taught officially by the church. That gap had grown and grown and grown through the medieval ages. The middle ages of the church were an incredibly dark time. They were teaching things, believing things that were just grossly inaccurate. But generally speaking, the common people didn't speak Latin, didn't speak Greek. So you can imagine a situation where if you're coming to this church and I'm the only one who is literate, I can basically tell you it says whatever I want it to say. That was essentially their circumstance.

When Tyndale reads the New Testament, understands the New Testament, and sees how greatly the established leadership is abusing people's ignorance, he's really incensed by it. The abuses of the Roman church at that time were at a fevered pitch. Ignorance and superstition reigned. There was profound levels of abuse of power. The church had grown incredibly corrupt. From their vantage point, the ignorance of the people was more of a feature than a bug—because as long as the people are stupid, you can get away with anything. Tyndale saw this and he was horrified.

He stepped out of working officially within the church structure and got a job essentially as a private tutor for a guy named John Walsh. It would be like if you have a very wealthy person who hires you to be their local cleric, their local clergy, to instruct his children, to be the personal advisor to this wealthy man within a state. What that did for Tyndale is it gave him access to tons and tons of people, because John Walsh would routinely bring in guests. People would come and stay for a couple days, and Tyndale would have dinner with them.

There's this famous event. Because he's proximate to all these people in power, John Walsh had a particularly distinguished guest—I can't remember if he was a bishop or a priest or what, but he was a doctor of divinity. Tyndale got into a fight with him over dinner. They're supposed to have some degree of decorum, but Tyndale couldn't stand it because what they were really debating was the relative position of God's word and the laws of the pope—the things that God has revealed versus the traditions that men have devised. This was really the big dispute in this conversation.

In the midst of it, his opponent shouted at him: "We would be better off without God's laws than without the pope's laws."

This set fire in Tyndale's heart. His famous retort—I don't know if you've ever heard this phrase—was: "I defy the pope and all his laws. If God spares my life, before long I will make the boy who drives the plow know more of scripture than you do."

That line about the boy who drives the plow has echoed for the last five centuries. What he is saying is: there are all these hotheads, all these smarties, all these multilingual doctors of divinity. You are the only ones who can read this book, and you're lying about it. I'm gonna find the lowest kid on the totem pole. I'm gonna find the plow driver, and he's gonna know God's word better than you do.

The only way that could happen is not gonna be by teaching all the kids who drive plows to read Latin and Greek. What we're gonna do is take the scriptures out of these ancient, arcane languages and put them in English so that ordinary common people—plow drivers, children—can read this book. Because you suck. That was his punchline.

He wanted the common man—not just to know the scriptures. It's not about knowing the book. It's that they would know the gospel. They would understand what God has said. Men and women and children were living and dying in ignorance with no ability to understand the offer of salvation, and the people who actually had that message were unwilling to share it with them.

So Tyndale made it a great work of his life to translate the Bible into English. It is a long book, so it's a significant amount of work. He begins with the New Testament and gets it done in only about 18 months—a year and a half of monkish, slavish labor—and he creates an English copy of the New Testament. Now remember, we're in the early 1500s here, around 1550. The printing press—Gutenberg's printing press—has been out for about a hundred years, but that's not as long as it sounds.

Like there's not a lot of books in the world. He translates the Bible into English and he goes to print and they just start churning this thing out. At this time, what he was doing was illegal. It was a crime to hold this book. He was accused of being a heretic, and of course, those who had all the power—like it's kind of the Wizard of Oz—"Don't pay any attention to the man behind the curtain. Just look at me."

But as that book spread and as people read it, as the treasures of the scriptures were made known, what he does for the English Reformation was massive, right? Because now people are able to read this and see this on their own. He was accused of being a heretic, and his response was:

I called God to record against the day that we shall appear before our Lord Jesus to give a reckoning of our doings that I never altered one syllable of God's word against my conscience, nor would this day if all that is in earth—whether it be pleasure or honor or riches—might be given me.

Now, what ends up happening? Well, this is what it looks like. This is the original. I used to have a copy of this—a facsimile from the 1500s—and somebody borrowed it and I don't know who, but I hope they're enjoying it right now because I've never gotten it back.

An archbishop or some bishop buys every copy that he can find so he can burn them all, and they just take the money and print more. And so this thing begins to go and begins to spread. But you guys, the hunt had begun. People realize what this guy is about, and that he is bad news.

And so they begin to hunt him. For the next 12 years—from the time he prints the New Testament for the next 12 years—Tyndale was constantly on the move. He couldn't stay in any one place very long. He was in hiding. He had an unbelievably full, rich life of trying to stay alive, using aliases because everybody wanted him dead. The English government wanted him dead. The pope wanted him dead. His life was marked for the rest of his life.

This is the first time this thing is printed in English in all of human history. This is Matthew. Look at this. You can see: "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham begat Isaac. Isaac begat Jacob. Jacob begat Judah."

And here, zooming in on that top right corner, do you see this?

All power is given unto me in earth. Go therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever.

That's the Great Commission. That is the first time these words are ever printed in English. And he ends it with the Great Commission, which just has to be—when he gets to this point in Matthew, I can't imagine the strength that he draws from this. This book is the living expression of this for the millions of people who are going to speak this language, right? And then it says here: "End of the gospel of Saint Matthew." Now what do you think happens after Matthew? Mark, that's right.

So right after Matthew begins the gospel of Mark—the beginning of the gospel of Christ, Son of God. That's Mark 1. When I flip through an actual copy, as you'd expect, you open up and it's Matthew, you get through that and it's Mark, you get through that and it's Luke, and then it's John. Matthew, Mark, Luke, then John, and then Acts.

What do you think comes after Acts? Right. Every one of us goes from Matthew to Mark to Luke to John to Acts. But instead of turning the page from Acts into Romans, you don't get Romans. What you get is an essay about Romans.

What is so interesting is that Tyndale is translating the scriptures from the original Greek into English—we get Matthew, we get Mark, we get Luke—but when he gets to Romans, he's like, "Everybody stop. Sit down." And he writes this lengthy essay about Romans because Tyndale recognized what many of us have recognized before and since: Romans is the greatest thing that's ever been written.

So rather than moving on, there is no introduction to Galatians, there is no introduction to Corinthians, there's no introduction to Peter's letters. But there is an introduction to Romans because he understood that this one—he flags it. Stop. Slow down. Let me help you with this one because this is the greatest thing ever written.

Here's what he says. This is the Apology to the Epistle of Paul to the Romans:

Seeing as this epistle is the principle and most excellent part of the New Testament and most pure evangelion—that is to say, glad tidings, and that which we call the gospel—and is also a light and a way into the whole scripture, I think it meet that every Christian not only know it by memory but also exercise himself in it continually, as with the daily bread of the soul. No one can read it too often or study it too well, for the more it is studied, the easier it is, and the more it is chewed upon, the pleasanter it is, and the more thoroughly it is searched, the more precious things are found in it. So great a treasure of spiritual things lies hid here in.

I will therefore bestow my labor and diligence through this little prologue to prepare a way into it, so far forth as God may give me grace, so that everyone may understand it. It has been darkened by false commentary, but nevertheless it is in and of itself a bright light sufficient to illuminate all the scripture.

First, we must mark diligently the manner of the speaking of the apostle, and above all things, know what Paul means by the words law, sin, grace, faith, righteousness, flesh, and spirit. Otherwise, no matter how often you read it, you will but lose your labor.

And he's off to the races, and he's not wrong. Romans—I've told you a thousand times—Romans is the greatest thing ever written. If we would know this book and understand this book, the mysteries that would be available to us... As I was reading through this again, it just occurred to me how ironic that the letter to the church of Rome contains the clearest explanation of the gospel, and it was the church of Rome that had grown so corrupt and was so desperately in need of their own letter. But we have it, and it's been made clear.

The Spread of Scripture and Its Global Impact

What Tyndale ends up doing is he finishes translating the New Testament and this thing is published. This thing is out. Try to stop it though they do, they cannot succeed. This thing is going to spread. It's going to be read. It's going to be duplicated. Every time they print one out, they print more. There is this network—and you guys, you just have to know these people, these men and women of the Reformation across every country. Things are going on in Germany. Luther does his own translation of the scriptures into German. It essentially unifies the German language. Luther's work in Germany is no less than Tyndale's work in England, but I don't speak German, so what do I care?

What we see in the English Reformation ends up having such an outsized effect because, for better or for worse, the British Empire—you've ever heard the saying, "The sun never sets on the British Empire"? That's because they went everywhere. The British covered the world, and when they went, they brought with them the gospel and they brought with them the English translation.

The reason that you and I speak English, the reason the world speaks English, was because of these people. Getting the Bible into English was such an evangelically significant moment in the history of the gospel spreading. So he gets it done, and now what do you have to do?

Now you got to do the Old Testament. Consider the barriers to this: Tyndale did know Greek. His training included knowledge of the Greek scriptures. So as monumental as that task was, it was within his range of power to do. He did not know Hebrew. And so translating the scriptures out of Hebrew and into English is immeasurably harder—never mind the fact that Hebrew is measurably harder, and there were no Jewish people anywhere proximate to him.

So the dude has to teach himself Hebrew. Let's just appreciate that for a minute. If you didn't have a professor or a Hebrew speaker and you just had some book, could you teach yourself Hebrew? If it was your task to make a handwritten copy of the Old Testament in English, could you? Would you? Do you see the scale of this job? It is unbelievable.

Oh, and by the way, everybody wants you dead while you're doing this.

He begins this work. He did not know Hebrew. There were no Jews to teach him. He's living in exile. He's being hunted by every authority known to man. He's continuing to make revisions and improvements to his copy of the New Testament. He wrote a book called The Obedience of the Christian Man, which was one of the most influential books in the whole world at the time—and I mean there weren't that many books being honest. He's living hand to mouth. He's in constant expectation of arrest. And he teaches himself Hebrew and then he translates—successfully translates the first five books of the Old Testament. It's called the Pentateuch—the books of Moses. What are those? Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.

There is one copy. One copy of the Pentateuch in the world, in his hand. I don't know if he pressed it. I'm not sure if he had pressed it. It was a handwritten manuscript. I'm gonna guess it was handwritten. But there is one and only one copy.

But the authorities were getting close again, so he had to flee. Not to worry—he brought it with him. He brings with him the only copy of the Pentateuch in the world that he had hand-translated in a language he didn't actually speak. And he leaves and he flees on a boat.

Would you like to guess what happens? The boat sinks and the manuscript is lost.

Have you guys ever—this hasn't happened for a while because we live in a cloud—but you old people, do you remember writing a paper and your computer crashes and it's gone? Can you imagine if your paper was Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy and you're the guy that wrote it and it's at the bottom of the ocean? What would you do?

You want to know what Tyndale did? He got out a piece of paper and whatever passed for a pen and wrote, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth," and he just does it all again.

Do you see this guy is a beast?

Now while this thing is going on, he's being hunted. He's being chased. And he wrote this book—The Obedience of the Christian Man. Think about the pressure under which he's operating. Not only does everybody want to kill him, but they want to kill his readers, and they are succeeding. He knows that to be caught with his books is a capital offense. But he's still printing them.

It's like—I spent my entire adulthood sharing the gospel with people. But I know sometimes when I share the gospel with people, I'll build a relationship with, like, Jewish kids at Penn State, knowing that if they become Christians their family is not going to be very fond of this. Or you go do evangelism in a Muslim community and people are not going to appreciate this. He knew that anybody who became a disciple under his tutelage was putting their life at risk.

And in fact, he would see that some people would get fearful. I have a quote here from this book. Listen to this. He knew that some people would have his book, they would get caught with his book, and by the way, if you would burn it, if you would surrender it—if you would—there was always, there was always an exit ramp. All you have to do is recant, burn the book, recant, and walk away. And if you would do that, then we'd let you go, right?

So he wrote in his "Obedience to the Christian Man." This he says:

If any man, completely against his heart but overcome with the weakness of the flesh for fear of persecution, has denied Christ as Peter did, or has surrendered his Bible—that means get rid of this English copy or put it away secretly—then let him, if he repents, come again and take a better hold and not despair or take it as a sign that God has forsaken him.

For God often takes his strength even from his elect when they either trust in their own strength or they neglect to call for his strength. He does that to teach them and to make them feel that in the fire of tribulation for his word's sake, nothing can endure and abide except his work and that strength which he promised. He would have us pray to him night and day for this strength with all due attention.

Because his purpose in writing that—he knew that it was a terrifying thing to walk faithfully with Christ. He knew that it was imperative that we would do it, but he knew that sometimes, you guys, we stutter. I've often said we get things wrong on the way to getting them right. We often live in cowardice on the way to courage.

And so he writes pastorally to all of these people who had walked with Christ faithfully, who had believed the gospel, but when it became costly and they shrank back—he did not say, "Be gone with you. You're excommunicated." He said, "No, no, no. It's okay. Come again." For perhaps what the Lord was doing was teaching you, weaning you from your own strength, that you might rely on his. He's incredibly wise. He is incredibly pastoral. He's incredibly patient with those that couldn't bear the fear and the dread and the terror of being caught with his book.

Thomas Cranmer's Recantation

Now I said in the beginning that we don't know—we have no record of any correspondence between Thomas Cranmer, the founder of Anglicanism, or the leader of the English Reformation, and William Tyndale. But do any of you know enough about Thomas Cranmer to know why those lines—those very lines—may have been incredibly meaningful to Thomas Cranmer? Do you know your Anglican history on this?

He did recant. The founder of Anglicanism recanted his faith in Christ. Cranmer had two best friends: Latimer and Ridley. Latimer, Ridley, and Cranmer were all captured. They were all caught. They were all sentenced to death. But the way they did it is that Cranmer, being the leader, was to go last. Latimer and Ridley were burned at the stake, and Cranmer was made to watch.

And it was such a hideous death—and I forget, I've got to look this up because I can never remember this part of the story—but a friend of either Latimer or Ridley, in a misguided attempt at mercy, added wood to the fire, believing that the faster this thing burns, the shorter will be your misery. But what he ended up doing was kind of like blocking the flames from reaching the terminal parts of his body, if you will. And so the fire burned his legs forever and ever and ever before it consumed the rest of him, actually bringing about his death.

And so he died miserably in enormous agony, and Cranmer was made to watch. And watching it, he recanted and he signed a confession that all of his teachings were error.

I don't know if he actually read this, but what Tyndale wrote was exactly what Cranmer needed. And then Cranmer recanted of his recantation. And there's a peculiar feature of his death: he himself was burned. So Cranmer finishes all of his work, writes the Book of Common Prayer, does all these things that establish the Church of England on a solid gospel-believing foundation, and then is burned alive at the stake. But when they burn him, he takes his right hand—the hand with which he had signed his recantation—and he holds it in the fire, that it might burn first, and perishes in the flame faithful to the gospel, precisely the way that Tyndale had written.

Yes, we blindly walk through this world with so much comfort. But these guys paid so incredibly great a cost so that we could have this book that sits on our coffee tables. I think the greatest thing we can do to honor these unbelievable giants of the faith is to read the book they paid so great a cost that we might have.

Tyndale's Capture

So eventually Tyndale gets caught. He was a brilliant translator, brilliant exegete, but apparently he was somewhat naive. He befriends some guy named Philip, who is a secret agent. And Philip leads him down some path—literally leads him through a hallway. And he finished, he redid the Pentateuch, and then he made it as far as Second Chronicles. So basically all from Genesis to Second Chronicles—all of the history. He didn't get the poems down. He didn't do the Psalms. He didn't do any of the prophets except for Jonah. So we have Genesis through Second Chronicles and then Jonah. I don't know why he skipped over to Jonah, but he did.

And then they capture him. You're going down this alley, they ambush him, they beat him.

They condemn him to die. He was kept in prison for about a year through a harsh winter in that year. Well, he's in this prison, he just continues to write—which is amazing that they allowed him to do that—continues to encourage all these believers that are seeing him in his imprisonment and his pending death.

And then finally the day came and they bound him to a stake to burn him. But for some reason I don't know exactly why, but in an act of mercy, they decided not to burn him to death. So they choked him to death and then lit his corpse on fire. So that was nice, right? They strangled him with a chain while the fire was lit around him. And then when he was dead, then they lit the fire.

And his last—oh, and by the way, do you know who the king was during all this time? It was King Henry the 8th.

The Church of England and King Henry VIII

If you've ever heard that the church of England was born so that Henry could divorce his wife and do all that stuff, there is a truth to it. I mean, it is absolutely the case that King Henry the 8th was the king of England. This thing was coming. But Henry was not a Christian, right? Henry was wicked. Henry was an evil, evil man. Cranmer was not. Tyndale was not. Latimer was not. Ridley was not. To attribute the founding of the church of England to King Henry is a gross and grave error. He was not driving this train. He was begrudgingly permitting it as this population was changing, but he was a wicked, wicked man.

Now, it is possible—I don't know if it's the case or not—it is possible that you will see him in heaven because there are reports that in his very end of life, he repented and became a Christian. I don't know if that's true or not. But he was directly behind—I mean, it was his decision to kill Tyndale, right? Cranmer was working with him, working on him, sharing the gospel. So he may have believed in his last moments.

But the final words that Tyndale ever said were: "Lord, open the king of England's eyes."

And whether his heart was ever opened or not, I don't know. But it is a fact of history that within two years of Tyndale's death, King Henry the 8th issued a decree that every church in England must have an English Bible in it. It was Tyndale's Bible. The very guy they said you've got to die for this heretical work—within two years demanded that this heretical work be made public in every church. And it was. Now they pretended it wasn't Tyndale's Bible, that somebody else went in and cleaned up all the errors. It's an absolute joke. It was Tyndale's Bible. It was Tyndale's work.

And it was not the case that Tyndale's Bible was accepted because the times had changed. It was much closer to the truth to say that Tyndale's translation had changed the times.

The Heritage of English Christianity

He is—you guys—you cannot underestimate the significance of the work of William Tyndale. Tyndale and Cranmer are these two heroes. Latimer, really, there's others as well. But you guys, you live as—by virtue of being an English-speaking Christian, but in particular by being English-speaking Christians in an Anglican church—you have an unbelievably rich heritage.

The people that went before us that brought the gospel out of darkness and back into light were just absolute beasts. I've read, and I was never Anglican for a minute of my life before I attended this church, so it's somewhat perhaps ironic that I'm an Anglican priest. But having come here and having read deeper into our own history, the more that I read of Cranmer, of Tyndale, of these guys—you guys—they were so incredibly on point.

Anglicanism has had multiple different centuries and it has been expressed in different ways at different times. But the original guys, they were derided. Do you know this? The original generation of Anglicans were given a nickname, and it was meant as a mockery and derision. Do you know what they were called? Which is to say, do you know what we were called?

Gospelers. It was meant to be a ridicule: "You gospelers, you're so fixated on the gospel and blah blah blah this gospel and blah blah blah blah that gospel." We are of the gospels. This is who we are. This is what we do. We believe that there is good news of great joy that should be for all people.

And there are some people that have gone before you that have paid an enormous price so that you could know what this book says. The question is: Do you know it? Have you yet built into your life the habit to say every day, "I'm going to just take bits of it. I'm going to learn it. I'm going to load it into my mind. I will believe what Tyndale believed—namely, that it's full of treasure."

I often will say it is full of treasure. You can find it when Tyndale was alive.

That wasn't true. It was full of treasure, but you couldn't find it unless you spoke some language that you do not speak. Tyndale is the reason that if you can read English, you can find it. So let's find it. This book is full of treasure. God has been merciful in what we have. Thanks for this particular giant. We owe him a debt of gratitude that I think is best repaid by reading the thing that he wrote so that we can know the treasures that God revealed.

All right, Gary, final word and then we're done. Well, in Tyndale's time, how many people were literate? What percentage of the English population could read? I don't know the answer to that. Certainly more people—far more people—could read English than could read, you know, Latin or Greek. But I don't know what that number was. But generally speaking, Gary, where the gospel has been translated and made available, literacy increases. So we don't translate the Bible for those that are literate. We translate the Bible to create the literacy.

Yeah, absolutely. So I don't know what the numbers were at that time, but certainly more after the work was completed than before it was begun, to be sure. Many dozens of words that Tyndale put in the New Testament were the first time they were ever printed in English. They said there would be no Shakespeare if it wasn't for Cranmer.

Yeah, yeah, this is it. I mean, these guys—same thing. Luther unified the German language. Tyndale unifies the English language. Incredibly significant work, for sure.

So I just want to actually text this to you, this quote, but I'll share it. Well, there is a quote that says the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. Yeah, but I love this quote.

Oh, yeah. Latimer says to Ridley as they were burned together, "I think be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man. We shall this day light such a candle by God's grace in England as I trust shall never be put out."

Amen. Amen. Yeah, read about Latimer, Ridley, Cranmer, and Tyndale. I mean, there's just their lives are incredibly inspiring.

All right. Oh, John, prior to the Bible being translated into English, ministry in Britain, in England, was very low. After the Bible became available, English literacy greatly increased. It got to the point where they did the King James translation—people were actually taking out loans to be able to buy a whole Bible.

Yeah, yeah, so John, just affirming again: literacy rates low when the project begins, but the scriptures bring literacy because now there's something worth reading.

Right. Amazing. All right, I think we will stop right there. Thank you for coming. And let's see—next week is Thanksgiving, so there will be no class. Thanks, even week. So we got a break next week and then we resume thereafter.