In the early 1500s God raised up William Tyndale, a passionate and gifted young scholar who learned Latin, Greek, and Hebrew in order to translate the Scriptures into English. Tyndale wanted to bring his nation a Bible they could read and a God they could know, but he faced two challenges. First, Bible translation was illegal, the equivalent to heresy. Second, Tyndale didn't have the financial means to focus his time exclusively on such a massive project.
It was a London businessman whose generosity bailed him out and so changed the course of the English-speaking world. When Humphrey Monmouth met Tyndale and heard about his ambition, Monmouth took a risk to provide for him, protect him, and partner with him. For six months he housed Tyndale and enabled him to work diligently on the translation. And when it was done, Monmouth leveraged his business connections with other merchants to use their ships to smuggle the contraband Bibles throughout England. Both men paid a high price for this endeavor. Monmouth ended up in prison. Tyndale ended up dead. But together they lit a flame that still burns in our generation.
Within two years of their deaths, the King of England ordered that every parish church should receive its own copy of the English Bible. Within 75 years, King James authorized an updated English translation, of which 80 percent to 90 percent was directly carried over from Tyndale's translation. For the next 450 years the King James Bible became the most influential book in the English-speaking world. And even today any English Bible you or I or any of the more than 600 million English speakers pick up is unashamedly built on Tyndale's foundation. History remembers Tyndale, but it has largely forgotten that the catalyst behind this massive movement of God was a generous businessman. Keep reading
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