I’m writing on a date of major importance today in Church History: I have these two portraits on the wall of my office to daily inspire me; both are men of unusual courage and zeal for God, His Church, and His kingdom.
On the left is William Tyndale, who is (humanly speaking) the reason you have a Bible printed in English. He was executed by Roman Catholic (RCC) officials for smuggling the Bible he translated into England (from the original Hebrew and Greek).
The man on the right is John Wycliffe, who died this day in 1384. He is known to us as “The Morningstar of the Reformation” because 150 years before Martin Luther, he was preaching the principles of what would later become the Protestant Reformation.
Wycliffe had a profound influence on other major reformers — particularly Jan Hus (the Czech reformer), Luther, and John Calvin (the theologian of the Reformation). Wycliffe, Hus, and Luther were all priests in the RCC who labored for reform within the RCC.
Wycliffe also was relentlessly persecuted by the Roman Catholic Church, and removed from his professorship at Oxford. But this man of zeal spawned a movement that still burns strong.