John Wycliff
Everybody Should Have a Bible
How many Bibles do you have? I did a quick count in my
office and came up with more than thirty-five. There may not
be quite that many Bibles in your home, but I suppose the
average Christian household has at least half a dozen. But
just six hundred years ago, you might be fortunate if you
ever once saw a single Bible in English, much less own one.
Who got the ball rolling from no Bibles for the people to
millions? One man instrumental in getting the Bible to the
common folk was named John Wycliff.
Wycliff was born in 1329, in England. He was a man of rather
humble origin, but of outstanding intellect. He attended
Oxford University, and soon became a professor there. His
brilliance was obvious to all, and evidenced in debate and
discussion. He was beyond doubt the leading philosopher of
Oxford University.
In the course of time, Wycliff was invited to serve as a
chaplain in the king’s royal court, and he soon offended the
church by supporting the government’s right to seize the
property of clergymen who were patently corrupt. Wycliff
thought that if God had given property to the church, He had
given to them to be good stewards over it. And corrupt
churchmen should be relieved of their stewardship!
Obviously, the Pope didn’t like this attitude at all.
But Wycliff was an outspoken opponent of the papacy; he
called the Pope "the Anti-Christ, the proud, worldly priest
of Rome, and the most cursed of robbers and pick-pockets."
He didn’t think there was anything magical about the Pope.
He thought that if the Pope was a worldly, unspiritual man
(and many of them were in those days), and that he ought to
be considered a heretic and deposed. As you might guess, the
Roman Pontiff could give just as good as he got. Pope
Gregory said that Wycliff was "vomiting out of the filthy
dungeon of his heart the most wicked and damnable heresies,"
and that he tried to overthrow the church. Of course, the
Pope condemned his views in 1377, but influential political
friends protected him from the terrors of the Inquisition.
Just what was it that Wycliff opposed in the Roman Catholic
Church? He was against many of their central doctrines. He
opposed the teaching of transubstantiation. That is the
claim that Jesus is physically, bodily, present in the bread
and wine of communion; that Christians literally eat the
body and blood of Jesus at the Lord’s table. Wycliff
believed that Jesus was spiritually present in the Lord’s
Supper, not physically present.
Wycliff condemned the worship of saints, and said that every
man has access to God, and doesn’t need a priest to get to
God. He thought that it was more important to worship God in
spirit and truth rather than with impressive traditions.
He also held that the real Church consisted of God’s chosen
people, who didn’t need a priest to mediate with God for
them. In addition, Wycliff believed that the church was far
too interested in worldly authority, and had forfeited its
spiritual authority by its greed for political power.
The traditions and customs of the church didn’t matter much
to John Wycliff. He was a greatly educated man, but didn’t
think that formal education was the most important thing for
a minister. He once pointed out: "The Apostles had no
college degrees!"
But as much as anything else, Wycliff believed that the
Roman Catholic Church was wrong in the way that it treated
the Bible. In those days, the teaching of the church was
more important than the teachings of the Bible. Wycliff
didn’t agree with this at all. He earnestly taught that
where the Bible and the church do not agree, it is the Bible
that should be followed, not the church. That may seem
obvious to you today, but it was revolutionary in the high
days of the Papal throne. Wycliff thought the Bible was the
ultimate authority, not any Pope or council. That’s why he
thought it was so important to get the Bible into the hands
of common folk.
So, one of the charges against Wycliff was that he had made
the Bible common and more open to laymen and even women! In
those days, people thought it was good for the clergy to be
educated and well read in the Bible, but they thought that
giving the Bible to the common folk was like casting pearls
before swine. Church authorities were instrumental in having
the reading of Wycliff Bibles forbidden under penalty of
death. Can you imagine that? The death penalty for reading
the Bible! Many martyrs perished in flames for refusing to
give up the book.
More than anything, Wycliff was a man devoted to the
scriptures. It had been hundreds of years since anybody was
really concerned with getting the Bible into the hands of
common people. He once said, "The Sacred Scriptures are the
property of the people, and one which no one should be
allowed to take from them . . . Christ and His apostles
converted the world by making known the Scriptures to men in
a way they could understand . . . and I pray with all my
heart that through doing the things contained in this book
we may all together come to everlasting life."
Most church leaders felt that they were wasting their time
trying to teach the Bible to the common people. But Wycliff
believed that people had a hard time understanding the Bible
because incompetent and ignorant people were teaching it so
poorly. For this reason, Wycliff put a lot of emphasis on
preaching the word, and doing it well. While at Oxford, he
attracted many enthusiastic supporters through his energetic
preaching and teaching. While other preachers told stories
about the saints and interesting fables, Wycliff taught the
Word of God. His reputation for exegetical teaching - for
letting the Bible speak for itself - spread across the land.
His sermons were powerful. His vigorous pamphlets were
widely distributed. He organized a group of priests to
preach throughout the land. He thought that preaching was
the most important duty of a minister, and called those
pastors content to let others preach for them "murderers of
Jesus."
Before long, his followers numbered in the hundreds, and
became known as "Lollards" - which may mean "mutterer”
perhaps for the way the Word of God was always on their
lips. By 1395, the Lollards had developed into an organized
group, with their own ministers and popular support. They
stressed a Bible-based religion; the availability of the
Bible to the common man, and good preaching. Wycliff and the
Lollards became a small reformation that began a hundred
years before Martin Luther. And the Lollard’s passion for
the Bible prepared the ground for Luther’s Reformation when
it came to England.
But the authorities of the church couldn’t stand to let
Wycliff keep preaching the doctrines that threatened the
Pope’s power. Friends in high places gradually deserted him,
and church authorities eventually forced him out of his
influential teaching position at Oxford.
On a day in May of 1378, the teachings of John Wycliff were
put on trial in the Blackfriar’s Monastery of London. As the
judges took their seats, a sudden cry of terror erupted. The
walls of the judgment-hall trembled; and earthquake shook
the city of London. Some thought this was God speaking
through nature, voicing His support of the accused reformer.
But the trial went on.
And in the end, Wycliff was condemned and excommunicated. He
was allowed to retire to a small town, where he worked on
his translation of the Bible into English. Wycliff had
expected to meet with a violent death from his persecutors,
but God allowed him to finish his work before he died. He
lived to be 64 years old.
In retrospect, John Wycliff has been called "the Morning
Star of the Reformation" because of his insistence that the
Bible was the only legitimate authority for faith and
practice.
Thirty-one years after he died, a church council formally
condemned Wycliff. Twelve years later his body was dug up
and removed from the "holy ground" surrounding the church.
His bones were burnt and cast into a river. But somehow it
was all very fitting; because the river that bore his ashes
eventually emptied into the ocean, and its waters circulated
all around the world. So did the passion for the word of God
that so marked the life of John Wycliff. So, the next time
you pick up a Bible in a language you can read, thank God
for men like John Wycliff.
With permission from Job Anbalagan gloryofhiscross@yahoo.co.in