Truth Unites - Tyndale's Brutal Death is NOT What You've Been Told

Episode Date: October 7, 2024

Gavin Ortlund combats two false narratives about the death of William Tyndale, the Protestant theologian and Bible translator. Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/

The English Bible is the most influential book in our language, and yet it is the product of a man who was exiled, vilified, hunted, betrayed, condemned as a heretic, strangled, and then burned at the stake. This video is the story of William Tyndale, who provided the first English translation of the Bible from the original Greek and Hebrew. His work gave the laity access to the Word of God. It hugely shaped the English language, and it laid the foundation for all subsequent English translations, especially the King James version, as we'll talk about throughout this video. Unfortunately, Tyndale's great accomplishments are often neglected and sometimes even disparaged. I'm grieved at how often I see these two mistruths spread about Tyndale.

Number one, oh, there was no objection at all to vernacular translations. It's just that Tyndale's translation was heretical. And number two, oh, it wasn't the church authorities that killed Tyndale. It was the secular authorities. I'll put up on the screen an example of these claims. I don't cite this example just to pick on it. It's extremely common to hear these kinds of claims. You can just Google it.

But the truth needs to be told about Tyndale and about his friends. Anybody who watches the video all the way through, hopefully what you will get is a truthful account of this noble man and his life's work and why it matters so much to us today and to be inspired by his example today. The outline here is pretty simple. We'll just first introduce Tyndale and his story and his significance a little bit. then we'll address these two mistruths about him.

Two preliminary remarks. Number one, if hearing about violence is disturbing for you, particularly burnings at the stake, which fortunately we'll have to get into here, I recommend only watching the first half of this video. Don't watch the second. I won't go over the top and be lurid. In fact, I'll leave off some of the gruesome details, but still, it's pretty painful, and so I'd want to give fair warning there.

Second preliminary comment is I recognize this is an emotional topic, and I want to play the long-term game. of having as positive a relationship as possible with different Christian traditions outside of Protestantism so that we can have integrity and friendship amidst our disagreements. We all argue for the truth, but we try to maintain the love of Jesus Christ between us. And so in this video, I will not hold back from sharing the truth. But here's the commitment I can make specifically to my Roman Catholic viewers up front. I will be equally critical of Protestant violence, insofar as that comes into this story.

I'm also going to do a video on Calvin and Michael Servetus at some point. will be equally tough on Calvin in that video. I'll also do my best not to exaggerate, speak in an inflammatory way, or speak in a manner of scoring points about what happened. Where I'll try to give is a fairly standard account that can be verified from nonpartisan works in the field of Tyndale Studies when I address a point that is contested in the scholarship or is historically uncertain. I'll try to flag that, so you know that. And I'll put up on the screen the various points that you can reference. You can go into the literature yourself, both, books by Tyndale, which I'll recommend, as well as passages in the biographical work done by David

Daniel and Brian Moynihan from whom I draw heavily for this video. I have to say things like this because people sometimes try to disparage my scholarship, even though they have no credentials themselves, and I just encourage people. Or what is also much more understandable is people who just, they've honestly never heard this before and they're shocked by it. So, you know, what I just say is you don't need to take my word for it. What I'm sharing here is not in dispute. You can Google it, or you can, you know, read some of these books. So first, let's dive in and talk about Tind... The only other thing I'll say is,

truly, what I hope for in these difficult discussions is that we are able to review the history. Believe me, I am passionate. I might get emotional during this. I really admire Tindale, and it hurts to think about what happened to him. But in the midst of... I would actually be going against my conscience

if I didn't plainly and truthfully lay it all out there. I will hold back nothing in this video. I will put it all what I think is the truth out there. But I'll try to do so in a way that has nothing of anger so much as just, honestly, what I would pray for is a sense of the love of Christ and a sense of, you know, looking for healing in where these terrible things have happened. But the first step is just the truth. We need to know what actually happened. So let's work through this a little bit. And we can be inspired by Tyndale and his brave friends as well.

First, Tyndale's significance. Let's just talk about him a little bit in case that you're not familiar with him. He was educated at Oxford as a young man over the course of nine years. He got a BA and then an MA. Later, he spent time in Cambridge, and then he became a tutor. This is when he's first accused of having Protestant sympathies. At Oxford and at Cambridge, Tyndale had a good reputation. One of the things that comes up a lot in his biographies, which I've been reading, is he was well-liked.

He was regarded as a sincere and kind of down-to-earth and good person, but his great quality was his skill in LinkedIn. linguistics. He's very gifted with rhetoric, with language. He became fluent in Greek, Hebrew, and Latin, and also in contemporary languages, Spanish, French, German, and Italian. While he's a tutor, his great life ambition becomes, to translate the Bible into the vernacular language, into English, and thus to democratize the knowledge of scripture for the common people. David Daniels' 1994 Yale University Press biography notes that before he left England to engage in this project, he said to a learned man, If God spare my life, ere many years, I will cause a boy that driveth the plow shall know more of the scriptures than thou dost. This is his life passion.

He wants the Bible to be known by the maidservant and the boy pushing a plow and everybody down to the common level. And the rationale for that is very simple. He thinks that the knowledge of scripture furthers the knowledge of the gospel. He says the gospel is the source of all happiness. He had his own sort of evangelical awakening experience, as so many of his friends did, through acquaintance with the New Testament. And so for him, the rationale for spreading the knowledge of scripture is obvious. Who is so blind as to ask why light should be showed to them that walk in darkness where they cannot but stumble, and to stumble is to danger of eternal damnation? Imagine what it would be

like to be ignorant of the scripture and then to receive it in your own language. I mean, this is the amazing different historical context we have to try to enter back into. In 1524, he left England to pursue this work, and he basically succeeded, though unfortunately he was martyred before he could complete the Old Testament. Nonetheless, his work laid the foundation for all subsequent English translations, and the quality of his work can be discerned by observing that the King James version, despite being the work of 54 divines, all but one of whom were ordained, made relatively little improvement upon the work of this one man working away in obscurity and in exile and so forth. It's amazing. Estimates are that Tyndale's work remained 84% of the New Testament of the KJV

and about 76% for the books that he translated. He was working through Joshua and the historical books of the Old Testament when his work was destroyed and he was killed. Now, this is an impressive achievement if you think about that, because the goal of these 54 divines commissioned by King James was to produce the definitive English translation. And yet the Oxford companion to literature calls the King James Version practically the version of Tyndale with some admixture of Wycliffe. Tyndale's work is also just significant for the English language. His influence upon modern English can be compared to Shakespeare or Chaucer. So many little turns of phrase that we've inherited are Tyndalian. Now, his broader life is fascinating. I mean, there's so much we can't

get into in this video long as it will be. We're going to do a deep dive here. It's just thick with drama. I mean, you can't make this stuff up. Somebody needs to make a movie about Tyndale. It's a story of secret agents and whispered meetings in taverns of friendship and courage and betrayal and ultimately martyrdom. I'll narrate the final months of his life and his death at the end of this video, so stick around for that if you're interested in that. But for our purposes here, let's just focus on these two popular level mistruths that you see repeated over and over, and they've become kind of stock answers, even though they are false. Number one, was Tyndale's translation heretical? And is that why it was opposed? So the question here is,

were English translations of the Bible at this time as such opposed, or were they welcomed, and it was just the heretical ones that were opposed? You see the difference there? And to get into this, we need to get a little bit of prior context. So let's go back to 1401, a century prior to Tyndale, when a man named Thomas Arundel, who served as the Archbishop of Canterbury and in various other roles as well, presses king in parliament for a law entitled De Heretico Comberendo. You can see that on the screen, it means on the burning of heretics. And this law stipulated burning at the stake as a punishment for various heresies and crimes, including the making or possessing of heretical books. And the cruelty of this punishment is to strike fear into people. You can read the whole text online. It's online. And this law is targeted at the Lollards, who are followers of John Wycliffe.

John Wickliff, he deserves a video of his own sometime. He's a priest and professor at the University of Oxford, often called the Morning Star of the Reformation. And virtually immediately, the law is used to be put into practice. The first Lollard martyr burned at the stake is William Sautry in March of that year. And among the chief crimes of Lollardy was Bible translation into the vernacular language. So De Heretico Camberendo didn't specify. in its own text which books are heretical, but this is how it was wielded against the Lawlards. They were derisively called Biblemen, because one of the things they were trying to do, especially in the 1380s, is provide English translations of the Bible. Previously, there were only a few portions of the Bible that had ever been translated into old or middle English, nothing large scale, and what had been done was not widely known, and so the result was huge ignorance of the Bible, especially among the unlearned, which comprised the majority of the population, though a little bit among the learned as well, to be honest. And Wycliffe's rationale

for trying to redress that situation is the same as Tyndale. He said, the truth of God standeth not in one language more than in another. An English Bible may edify the lewd people as it doth clerks in Latin. Why may we not write in English, the gospel and other things dedicating the gospel to the edification of men's souls. So the concern here is pretty simple and I think reasonable. Ignorance of the Bible furthers ignorance of the gospel. And so for the clergy to withhold the knowledge of the scripture is to hinder the experience and knowledge of the gospel itself. Here's how Wycliffe put it, speaking of the clergy, this wicked, kindred willed that ye gospel slept. One of the fun things of this video is we'll get into Middle English a little bit,

which will be interesting. And I'll explain words if they're really unclear, but I kind of like to just leave them up. Let's share how Moynihan puts this, and then defend Moynihan against some of the common reactions. Moineshan's a good scholar. I think he was at Cambridge. He died many years ago. He says, Wycliffe was correct. The medieval church had no desire to share the secrets of the trade. Its monopoly of faith was bolstered by its near monopoly of Latin. It opposed the translation of the authorized Vulgate Bible into any native or vernacular language. Now, that is a slothelie. A slight footnote, I'm going to come back and give to that. The Vulgate was written in the Latin of the 4th century. It was incomprehensible to the great majority of laymen and women, who also had little

understanding of the Latin rights and ceremonies used in everyday worship. They were dependent on the clergy to interpret the mysteries of the faith for them. The church feared that translations would open its dogmas to question and challenge its spiritual dominion. Now, that is a very standard sort of account that you will get. Now what happens here is people just really react strongly to this, and I think there can be dangers in either sides to go too far. So let's just try to pursue this a bit and be very precise, okay? It's not true that translating the Bible into vernacular languages was universally banned throughout medieval Europe. You can find some vernacular translations. However, it is true that it was frequently banned and that translations were rare and inaccessible,

and that ignorance of Scripture was therefore a huge problem. And for the sake of this video, it is certainly true that there was no English translation at this time. Sometimes people will point to these rare and scattered and largely inaccessible earlier translations in certain other languages, as though this meant, oh, there was no problem with vernacular languages. or vernacular translations, which, of course, is not a good response. We're talking about the English context here. And even elsewhere, it was very rare for a laity to have access to and knowledge of these translations. So let's get really precise and just nail this down, because I've learned. People will just, I mean, it's amazing. They'll not only try to throw me under the bus, they'll throw

like these books published by Cambridge University Press and so forth under the bus, even though they have no credentials themselves, just because they're very defensive against these claims. And I understand that. I get it. It's painful to have your tradition challenged, especially if you've never heard this stuff before. But what I'm repeating here is pretty standard. But because that reaction comes, I'm going to try to just be very precise. So you can find Bible translations before the Reformation into many languages other than Latin, but they tend to be more common in the East. So early on, you can find Syriac, Coptic, Gothic, Ethiopic, Armenian, Georgian and Aramaic translations in the 9th century, Persian and Arabic translations are attempted.

But in the West, in these romance languages, they're very rare. You have a German translation in the 15th century. You have a French translation in the 13th. These are not from the Greek and Hebrew. They're translations of the Vulgate. So they're basically, in effect, a translation of a translation. More importantly, they're not widely accessible and known. So there is a problem throughout Western medieval Christianity of rampant ignorance of scripture.

There's a famous story of Martin Luther saying he was 20 years old before he'd ever seen a Bible. Philip Schaff tells the story of a famous printer in France around the time of the Reformation, who said that the doctors in that region only knew the scripture through quotations of Jerome and the decredals, and he was more than 50 before he knew anything about the New Testament. So you can see even among the clergy, like I mentioned, you do have this issue and you can see discipline against it. So during Tyndale's years as a tutor, before he left England, in the early 1520s, a survey is conducted of his county. And out of the 311 priests, nine did not know that there were 10 commandments, and more than half of these 311 priests could not name the 10 commandments.

30 of them didn't know that the Lord's prayer was authored by Jesus. And so you find punishments being enacted for this, like John Trigg was one of the priests who's obliged to stand on a bench wearing a shirt, declaring, I suffered this penance because I cannot say one of the commandments of Almighty God. So there is no question that there's an ignorance of Scripture at this time in history, and it is indisputable that there are prohibitions of translating the Bible into the vernacular language. Even if that's not universal policy, you find that.

that a lot. The great, again, I'm trying to be clear about this because it gets minimized and deflected too much. The great church historian Philip Schaff discusses this in volume six of his history of the Christian church. And his summary is that the medieval church uniformly set itself against the circulation of the Bible among the laity. And he, and again, now you can say, well, Schaff is wrong and you can point to little obscure examples. Okay, fine. He's generally right. And he gives three examples here. Let's just document them because I, I've found that I need to be more specific. Again, people will throw Shaft under the bus, as well as others if I don't get specific.

So we'll have to go back and document that. First, Shaft references Pope Innocent III, who around 1,200 AD wrote several letters to the Diocese of Metz, where the Waldensians are active, forbidding translations of scripture and stipulating seizure for trial and penalties of those engaging in that. I have another video on the Weldensians, if you're interested for more information about them. Second Schaff references the Synod of Toulouse in 1229, canon 14 of which I will put up here on the screen, quote, we prohibit also that the laity should be permitted to have the books of the Old or New Testament, unless anyone for motive of devotion should wish to have the Salter or the Breviary for divine offices or the hours of the Blessed Virgin, but we most strictly forbid they're having

any translation of these books. Further south in Spain, at a local council five years later, this legacy is also followed, no one may possess the books of the Old or New Testaments in the Romance language, and if anyone possesses them, he must turn them over to the local bishop within eight days after promulgation of this decree so that they may be burned. Third, Shaft references Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain. These are Catholic monarchs, you've probably heard of them. They're famous for financing Christopher Columbus.

They're famous for expelling Jews from Spain, and they're also famous for their role in the Spanish Inquisition, and for forbidding the translation. or possession of translations of Scripture was among their other activities. One of the false claims you hear also is that people say, well, it doesn't matter if they didn't have vernacular languages because everybody knew Latin, and they had the Vulgate. This is also totally false. Latin was the language of the educated elite.

The vast majority of people spoke various romance languages and had little familiarity with Latin. So, to summarize, while it's true that there's not one universal policy, and you can find some translations, this should not be leveraged to say, oh, there's no problem with vernacular translations. The forbidding of those was a frequent occurrence and ignorance of scripture is a huge problem. Ultimately, the Council of Trent left it up to the judgment of each local bishop or inquisitor, whether or not to allow vernacular translations of

scripture in their region on the grounds that permitting them everywhere will result in more harm than good. Now, for the purposes of our video, we don't even need to defend all that that I just laid out that's talking about the broader European scene, it is certainly clear and not undisputed at all that you did not have English translations, which is our focus with Tyndale. The work of the Lollards and later of Tyndale and his associates was pioneering. In old and middle English, you do have some passages of the Bible that had been translated or a translation had been attempted. In the 7th century, the poet Cadman had translated portions of the book of Genesis, a few passages in Genesis, Bede and a few others had worked on

translating some of the Gospels, but nothing resembling a complete version of the Bible had been attempted before Wycliffe. In fact, importantly, Thomas Arndel, the same archbishop who pressed for De Heretico-Combarendo on the burning of heretics, several years later drafted the constitutions of Oxford to oppose translations from Scripture into the vernacular. Quote, we therefore decree and ordained that no man hereafter by his own authority translate any text of the scripture into English or any other tongue by way of a book, libel or treatise, and that no man can read any such book, libel or treatise, now lately set forth in the time of John Wycliffe or since or hereafter to be set forth

in part or in whole. So, the reality is people just, the sad reality in why I try, I try to be not angry or, you know, shouting or anything, but because of my zeal for the truth, especially the people we're going to talk about who were so brutally massacred, We need to know the truth, okay? A lot of this is denied, just flatly denied. Those who transgressed, the constitutions of Oxford, from which I just read, were stipulated to be cursed with excommunication and anyone who relapsed for a second offense is to be burnt at the stake. Now let me emphasize this. The constitutions of Oxford are drafted in a time and place where there is no current alternative vernacular Bible. Therefore, the result of this event is,

to keep the laity in ignorance of the scripture. That's the context in England. And then as time goes forward, the constitutions of Oxford create this stigma associated with possession of an English translation of the Bible. In the context of discussing the search for Sir John Oldcastle, who was a Lollard burned at the stake in 1417, Moynihan says the possession of any biblical manuscript in English

was taken as evidence of Lollardy. A particular quality of horror was thus attached to the translation of scripture in English. So that is the English language context leading up to Tyndale, the 15th century backdrop that brings us to his 16th century efforts. I hope you can see that when people try to say things like, oh, the church had no problem with vernacular translations, it was just these heretical ones that were bad. You're not being told the truth. Lollards, for a hundred years prior, are being burned alive for possessing and making these at a time when there is no alternative English translation. Let that sink in. If you're a Christian in London, in the 1400s, that's the situation you're in.

Along comes Tyndale into that context. He leaves England to work on this. He's in the low countries. We don't always know where he is because he's so skilled at hiding. And he has to hide. He's in exile. And he labors away, and he completes the New Testament in 1526. I'll put up a picture of the title page.

Naturally, you will notice it bears no name or identifying marks, since it's the work of a fugitive. instead it has these simple and yet beautiful words of introduction that I'll put up on the next screen and I'll read them in case you can't read them. The New Testament, as it was written and caused to be written by them which heard it, to whom also our Savior Christ Jesus commanded that they should preach it unto all creatures. Now the problem is the constitutions of Oxford originally targeted at Lollard translations are still in force now these 118 years later. Furthermore, new restrictions had also been imposed on any books associated with reform efforts. On May 14, 1521, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, who was Lord Chancellor of England, and as such,

he represented the Pope there, basically. He commanded all reform writings to be relinquished to the local bishop within 15 days, and with papal authority directed all bishops in England to read a commission allowed in every church in the land at mass, and the commission referenced many in diverse, pestiferous and pernicious propositions and errors of Martin Luther, and it claimed that these were setting forth both Greek and Bohemian heresies. Now that's interesting. Okay, so of course Bohemian heresies are in reference to Jan Hus and his followers. The Greek heresies are in reference to the Eastern Orthodox, who from this time in history, from a Roman Catholic perspective,

had some points of similarity with these new heresies, heresies that are popping up among the Hussites and the Lollards and the Lutherans. And that is most especially allowing the clergy to marry and offering the laity both bread and wine and communion. So as a result of this legislation, the Tyndale New Testaments have to be smuggled into England secretly. So they would take individual sheets of the New Testament in English and hide them amidst the incoming cargo packed where they couldn't be seen amidst tools, cannon, glassware, plants, figs, sometimes inserted into other books and parchments. You know, you have a book and a bunch of New Testament pages put into it and then reassembled after it arrives. In some cases, they would put entire New Testaments stacked inside barrels and casks,

which the cargo manifest would falsely claim contained either wine or oil. Sometimes they would be slipped into boxes of furs. Sometimes they'd be carefully wrapped and concealed with. in sacks of flour, and then letters and financial support from Tyndale's backers in London would be translated in hidden trap compartments in chests. And if anybody's caught in this smuggling, they would suffer imprisonment. Prison was not a nice place back then. I mean, it never is, but especially back then. So enormous caution is exercised, and the smugglers would mark which bales and cases contained the contraband with a dab of color or a small twist on a part of the

cloth, these very subtle things, sometimes they would get caught. Thomas Moore, Tindale's chief opponent, whom we'll discuss more later, was able to break one prisoner under interrogation and extract from him the secret marking for a particular shipment of New Testaments and which ship it came on and said they were located and so forth. So the net result of all this, though, a lot make it through, and the net result of all of this is that in early 1526, Tyndale's English New Testaments are flooding into England. See, the Lawlerd translation, it had to be hand-copied, which is enormously time-consuming, but now you have the printing press, and there's not a page of scripture that has ever been printed before in English.

The printing press is a game-changer, so now these Tyndale New Testaments can be disseminated in huge numbers, but that doesn't mean they were cheap. People were willing to pay. These were very popular. These Tyndale New Testaments often would sell for two to four shillings, okay, somewhere in there. So today, three shillings today would be the equivalent of somewhere roughly around 70 pounds in England today. So this is a high demand, and you've got the supply coming into to meet the demand. It becomes a big business, and this becomes very threatening to the local Roman Catholic authorities in England. Church of England doesn't break away until a little bit down the road in 1534. So Cardinal Wolsey declares Tyndale a heretic and calls for

his arrest. The Tyndale New Testament is condemned to be burned, and the pretense for this is that these are bad translations that sneak in heresies. You can see this kind of warning issued by Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of Durham, speaking of intermeddling heretical articles into the translation. Now, Tunstall demands all copies to be relinquished within 30 days, but even before, on pain of excommunication. But even before you get to the 30 days, he organizes a grand conflagration of Tyndale New Testaments. And October 28, 1526, he preaches a fiery sermon denouncing Tyndale's New Testament as supposedly having 3,000 errors, and then every copy that can be found is seized and burned. Now, the burning of the Bible is shocking even at this time. It's one thing to burn

heretical books. But to burn, to hold a public burning of the Word of God is a bold move. Nonetheless, Tunstall's action is met with approval from reigning Roman Catholic authorities. On November 3rd, the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Warham, adopted the same policy, calling for a hunting down of Tyndale New Testaments. And approval of this public burning of New Testaments also came from Lorenzo Campeggio, a cardinal serving as protector of England, meaning basically he represented England within the College of Cardinals. That was a position appointed for by the Pope. And he's in Rome at the time, but he's writing saying he's pleased to hear of this

and sure it is pleasing to Almighty God. Now, even though it has approval from kind of the highest ranks of authority in Roman Catholic hierarchy, this bothers people because this is a very popular. I mean, people enjoy having the New Testament. And so there's controversy. And there needs to be some kind of justification for this, because the official policy is not to burn all vernacular translations. They were always very careful to say, it's not necessarily wrong for another person to come along and offer a translation,

even though we will see an approved English translation doesn't come about way down the road, you know, 60 years plus just for the New Testament alone. But they're always very careful to say, it's not bad in principle. They just need a reason for why this translation is bad, and so the pretext is it's a heretical translation. That's what we'll vet right now. We'll see, is that true? Some have also tried to argue that there were glosses and notes in the margin that were heretical, and that's why it was burned. But Daniel notes, this is simply false. Such notes existed in other additions, and this raised concerns in other contexts, but they were not in many of these 1526 New Testaments being burned here. Rather, the rationale at the time is that these are heretical,

and there's the language of thousands of errors. Now, there were errors in this translation, okay, many of which were corrected by Tyndale himself in the second edition, which came out in 1534, but these are not matters of heresy. Daniel calls most of these exceedingly trivial, and there's jokes about Tyndale himself saying, you know, speaking of the heresy of failing to dot an eye, and that it's a heresy if you don't dot the eye. You know, most of these are tiny little things. The only major substantive issues seem to boil down to the translation of four words that intersect in the Protestant Roman Catholic debate. Tindale's choice to use the word congregation rather than church for ecclesia, the Greek word, the word love rather than charity for agape,

the word repent rather than due penance for metanoa. And then slightly behind those three, the word senior and then later elder rather than priest for the Greek word presbyteros. In those cases, Tyndale's translation was linguistically sound, but it was a threat to the contemporary Roman Catholic theology, and so it became a pretext for opposition to these translations as heretical. But just on philological grounds, Tyndale's translations are perfectly acceptable. In his later disputations about these terms with Thomas Moore, Tyndale appeals to Jerome's usage of the Latin term peniteo, as well as the Hebrew word for repent, as well as just the meaning of metanoa throughout the New Testament. He's just saying, repent is just what the word means. And he goes

through four different aspects of repentance. Tindale just seems basically correct here. It's very hard to say that due penance is a preferable translation of metanoa, certainly not that you have to translate it that way, and it's heresy not to. Remember, Tyndale's translations are followed by the vast majority of subsequent English translations in existence today. In most cases, by the 54 divines laboring on the King James translation, if Tyndale is a heretic for these kinds of choices, then the vast majority of other English translations are also heretical. Even Erasmus, who is highly respected by Tyndale's opponents, uses some of these same words, even the word congregation for Ecclesia, one of the more controversial choices.

So the translation choices that Tyndale makes are not unique to him. Now, Tunstall, the Roman Catholic bishop leading the charge here, would have known that these are reasonable translations because he himself was familiar with Greek. He had supported Erasmus and his Greek New Testament. And Daniel notes, Tunstall was himself a Greek scholar who would know very well better than most that Tyndale's translation was faithful to the Greek even and especially in matters like congregation, love, and repent. So his conclusion is, at bottom, Tindale's offense had been to offer the people, Paul, in English, and translate four key New Testament words in their correct Greek meanings instead of priest, church, charity, and due penance. Moineham similarly notes that

Tyndale has never been found to deliberately alter the sense and meaning of any passage, though they did not admit it, the wrath of Tunstall and more rested on the translation of three words. Yet to this day, we still hear this misrepresentation. It's everywhere that Tyndale's translation was opposed because it was a heretical translation. And this is just false. His New Testament is extremely similar to the K. JV, and there's no alternative for many years afterwards in the English language. If the real concern from Roman Catholic opponents had been to protect the sheep from a bad translation, rather than about the threat to their power through translation into the vernacular as such, then why didn't

these prelates quickly call for an acceptable English translation as an alternative to Tyndale's? That doesn't happen until you get the New Testament of the Catholic Dewey Rames Bible in the 1580s, and an entire Bible translation doesn't arrive until the early 17th century. So if you're a Christian in London and you live in the year 1530 or 1550 or 1570, what are you supposed to do? Is it really worth losing access to the entire scripture just because of words like love and repent, which are at any rate perfectly acceptable translations? It's not credible to say opposition to Tyndale's New Testaments was motivated by a concern for the welfare of the laity.

The reality was this was a threat to their power. And that's how Tyndale himself put it. They tell you that scripture ought not to be put in the mother tongue, but it is only because they fear the light and desire to lead you blindfold and in captivity. Sum it up like this on this first point. English is the most common language in the world currently. The Bible is the most popular English book ever published. Therefore, an English Bible is a significant accomplishment in human history. It's time to stop throwing William Tyndale, the chief person who stood behind that development

under the bus, and time to honor this noble and gifted man for what he has done. Second mistruth about Tyndale that we need to correct here. Who is responsible for his death? Here's where you can click off if you're sensitive to violence. This is the second major false claim, and I'm grieved to see how commonly it is repeated. People say, no, no, no, it wasn't the church authorities that executed him. It was the secular arm. And my appeal would be, with how terribly Tyndale and his friends have already been treated, the least we can do now is come along after and tell the truth. Let's explain why that's not truthful, and it's pretty easy to see once you get the basic theology of heretic extermination at play in the times and just the basic narrative.

You know, if you just read anything that's going on, you realize that's a false antithesis that wasn't true. present for either the secular or ecclesial authorities. Now, so let's just work through this and explain this. The idea of the theology of the extermination of heretics is developing throughout the medieval era. In 1199, Pope Innocent III declares heresy as a treason against God in the worst possible crime. This becomes the prevailing medieval way of thinking. And this goes back to Augustine. It has roots in Augustine. It's echoed by Thomas Aquinas. And so within this framework, Heretics and heresy are seen as this contemptible disease that needs to be eradicated from the planet. It's like leprosy threatening the body.

It needs to be completely cut off. And let's be clear that this understanding is retained by some of the Protestants. You can see this in the Reformed theologian Theodore Beza, and you can see Protestants acting on this. The Anglicans were absolutely brutal to the Catholic loyalists in Britain after Henry VIII broke off from Rome. I'm a Baptist, I'm committed to separation of church and state, an absolute nonviolence within the church. I oppose all of that. Like I said, I will not hold back in my criticisms of Protestants, especially when I do my video on Calvin. So that's there. This is the reigning thought. You know, heresy is this disease. It's a gangrene. It needs to be sliced off and sent straight to hell.

On the other hand, there's also this principle of the church does not shed blood. So how do you hold these two things together. Starting in the late 12th century, Pope Lucius III had found a way to hold these two things together, and that is basically use the secular authority for the actual execution. So this becomes the standard practice. The church authorities try and convict someone of heresy, and then the heretic is relaxed. It's not a relaxing thing, but they're relaxed into the power of the civil authority to actually carry out the execution at the church's command. And if the civil authority refuses to do so, she is then threatened with excommunication. For example, Canon 3 of the Fourth Lateran Council threatens civil authorities with excommunication if they

neglected to obey commands of cleansing heretical filth from their territory. Similarly, Pope Innocent the 4th's 1252 Papal Bull, add extirpanda, which famously authorized the use of torture by inquisitors to extract confessions from heretics, demanding only that they stop short of danger to life or limb, also threatened the civil power with severe penalties if any head of state became a protector of heretics. This, to be a protector of heretics is a compromise of the faith. So that's the reigning thought. You can see the overall kind of philosophy of church state relationship here from the two swords framework of Pope Boniface the 8th's, papal bull in 1302 Unum Sankton, which I've often cited on other matters about no salvation outside the church.

But you can also see this idea. This distinguishes the temporal sword, which is the secular or civil power, and the spiritual sword, which is the church's power. And it says the temporal is subject to the spiritual. So it's very clear here. Okay. The civil authority wields the sword at the church's behest. Note these underlined words.

Kings and soldiers execute the temporal sword at the will and sufferance of the priest. So the temporal power is subjected underneath the spiritual power. The church is the one actually claiming the authority and simply executing this through the secular arm. So you can see how offensive and dishonest it is when people say, oh, it wasn't the church that killed Tyndale and his friends or the Waldensians or the Hussites or the Lollards or the Arnoldists or the Petrobrusians or the Catholicians. and so many others. It was the secular authority, not the church. This is even worse than if the Pharisees were to say, oh, we didn't have anything to do with the death of Jesus. That was Pilot

and the Roman soldiers. Because in that sense, in that case, the Pharisees don't claim authority over pilot, right? But here, the Roman Catholic hierarchy did claim authority over the civil power and used her as her own mechanism for her own pronouncements or rooted in her own theology of heretic extermination. Now, what is this theology of heretic extermination exactly? It's seen as a kind of spiritual cleansing. So at Jan Husse's execution, you can see the sermon given just prior is Roman 6th. The body of sin must be put to death. It's about cleansing this filth. It's like a gangrene. We need to slice it off and put it to death and so forth. And we've seen that language here. This is why it's not just to be mean or something like that. This is why with Wycliffe, it's done

posthumously on him. They dig up his bones and burn them. The basic idea here is a double punishment, the punishment of the senses, which is imposed by actual fire in this world, and then the punishment of damnation, which is the fire of the next world. And so on the next screen, you can see the burning of John Oldcastle. I think I've mentioned him before. He's a Lollard killed early 15th century, particularly brutal story. I won't go into here. But to put it plainly, stripped of all niceties, we need to put it this bluntly, and we need to understand this for the shock value. Again, with history, we just have to be brutally honest. Here's what the church is saying. We burn you in this world, and then you burn in the next. The temporal fire preceding the everlasting

fire. This is frequently how Thomas Moore will speak. Let's talk about Thomas Moore a little bit. He is Tindale's most zealous opponent. And for this final wing of the video, what I'll basically do is to tell some stories of Moore's killing of Tyndale's friends and sympathizers to lead up to the killing of Tyndale himself. Here's a picture of Moore. One of the strange things about him is he is a saint. Pope Pius X. 11th canonized Moore in 1935 and Pope John Paul II actually declared him patron saint of politicians in 2000, not too long ago. This is strange. I mean, you know, I just got to be honest with you. Moore, he's a complicated person. He certainly has some positive qualities. He was beheaded himself for, you know, he didn't, you can say that, he didn't compromise after Henry

the 8th broke away. But he was a man of, I think it's, actually, since I said, I'll say nothing that's not disputed here. It is disputed. People try to defend more, and his legacy is disputed. I think from even just the quotes I will show you, it's hard to deny that he had a kind of unmitigated hatred against Tyndale and Tyndale sympathizers. Daniel references his near rabid hatred of Tyndale. Moynihan talks about his malice as being a phenomenon, insatiable, galloping, morbific. His polemical writings are a thing to behold. If I were to quote the most lurid passages of Moore against Tyndale, I would have to warn against both violence and profanity in this video. You can see page 259 of David Daniel's biography, if you want. There are disputes about more.

People try to defend him. It is disputed, for example, whether he personally oversaw the torture of heretics. That's what the Protestant polemicist John Fox claimed. Scholarship today is disputed on that. I'm not relying on Fox for this video. I'm relying on contemporary scholarship and primary sources for this video. What is not disputed is that Moore was very zealous as a heresy hunter. This became the great passion of his life. He developed a web of spies and informants. He did everything he could to hunt down Tyndale and his friends and to send them to the fire. even to the point of being willing to break laws about detaining prisoners, which he did in the case of Thomas Phillips, at least. Again, there's some dispute about how much this is happening. You can look into that if you're curious.

So in late 1529, Moore becomes Lord High Chancellor of England, and he criticizes his predecessors for being too soft on heretics, saying basically they're kind of pushing the envelope of the law, giving softer penalties when a heretic confessed. and, you know, he's basically saying we need sharper action here, and this results in a series of deaths to Tyndale's friends. And let's tell the stories of six of these brave men before we get to Tyndale himself. 1530, it begins with Thomas Hitton, who is seized. Hitton is committed to the evangelical cause. He had left England to join Tyndale and other exiles in the low countries, but he made the mistake of returning for a brief visit to communicate with supporters and help organize the district of smuggled books. He's completed his journey. He's walking along in the fields, about to return

to Antwerp on the English coast there, and a small posse of men are looking for a thief. They stop him to see if he's a thief. They realize he's not the thief, but as they search his coat, they find he has hidden pockets. They open up the pockets. There are letters to the evangelical exiles in the low countries. And given Moore's recent posture, tightening things up, ratcheting things up, he's arrested, he's handed over to the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Warham, whom we've already met. There's a series of five interrogations in which he's discovered to hold to heretical beliefs like rejecting purgatory. He's also admits to smuggling Tyndale New Testaments, and he refuses to abjure. So he's burned at the stake on February 23, 1530. His friends in Antwerp are shocked by this.

Can you imagine what it would be like to hear of this? You know, you're working, you're expecting your friend to return, you get news of this. They have a new calendar printed with February 23rd marked as the day of St. Thomas. Moore, of course, takes great offense at this, calling him said, instead the devil's stinking martyr. Quote, the spirit of error and lying have taken his wretched soul with him straight from the short fire to the everlasting, to the fire everlasting. And so there's, that's the thing, that's the understanding. If they don't repent, it's from one fire to the next. Thomas Bilney came next, a year and a half later. He had studied at Cambridge as a young man, like many others, he has kind of an awakening experience through the study of the New

Testament. And he's reading 1 Timothy 115 about Christ coming to save the world to save sinners, and he feels this marvelous comfort and quietness and joy. And he realizes it's nothing that I can do to save myself. It's what Christ has done. These experiences are wonderful to read the joy. over and over, same experience. You read the New Testament, you understand the gospel, and it results in joy and peace and assurance. Over and over, the same thing I want to give my life to today. So, Billney becomes committed to the evangelical cause. He's affectionately called Little Billney, because he's a very small person.

He becomes a friend of Hugh Latimer, if you know that name. He eventually gets into trouble for preaching evangelical doctrines, and in 1527, he is dragging from the pulpit while preaching and imprisoned, he's pressured to recant for over a year, and eventually he caves. He recants or abjures. Afterwards, he is released, but now he's overcome with depression. This happens so much. His friends in Cambridge don't even like leaving him alone, because they're afraid he's going to harm himself. One night, it all stirs up, and he says, I'm going to Jerusalem, echoing the words of Christ. He begins preaching out in the open fields to crowds, and he gives out Tyndale's writings and Tyndale New Testaments, and of course he's caught.

He seems to be giving up the thought of not escaping. He's caught in Norwich, Norwich, I think you pronounce it, English city, and he's convicted of heresy. The bishop Nix is the local bishop there. He's relaxed to the secular power. While he's in his jail cell, he's practicing. Now, this is the worst part of it all, I think, is the anticipation. between the trial and then the actual execution. He's preparing for his burning by holding his finger over a candle reciting Isaiah 43-2. When you walk through the fire, you'll not be burned.

Unfortunately, for his execution, it was a windy day and the executioner bungled it, letting the reeds closer to him first, only to have the fire blown away after it's horribly mangled him. So for a while, he's stuck before the actual wood is lit on fire. And I won't tell you any more about that because it's gruesome, too disturbing, but it takes several minutes for the wood to catch on fire. You can see why it hurts so bad when people just lie about this, minimize this, act like it doesn't happen, when none of this is historically contested. Nobody says, oh, no, Thomas Bilney wasn't actually burned to death. After witnessing his death, Bishop Nix, who had tried him, is reported to have said, I burned Abel and let Kane go. He was very moved by watching it.

these martyrs, they really did have an impact, especially on the local people. Thomas Moore, on the other hand, falsely made up a rumor that Thomas Bilney had recanted a second time right prior to his death. And thus, you know, Moore saying, oh, he's in heaven now praying against the errors of his former ways. And this is false. The local witnesses are quite sympathetic to Bilney. They very much love him. And even when it becomes later a matter of official.

interrogation, they deny that there was any recanting. He was given a paper to read, but they denied that he read it. The only two words that eyewitnesses reported Bilney shouting while he was dying during this prolonged burning. Two words, Jesus and Credo. Latin word for I believe. Richard Bayfield had the same fate just a few months later in 1531. He had a very similar story to Bilney. Study to Cambridge, discovers the New Testament, has an evangelical awakening, is arrested once and recants, leaves England to go to the low countries. He's a great help to Tyndale there. He becomes one of the leading smugglers. Unfortunately, while smuggling a shipment of books into England in spring 1531, he's betrayed. You know, Thomas Moore has his webs everywhere.

And he's seized, imprisoned, shackled to the wall of his cell by his neck, waist, and legs, and kept in the darkness. Now, when someone has once recanted and gone back, there's very little hope. and very little mercy. Thomas Moore writes, Bayfield fell to the heresy and was abjured, and after that, like a dog, returning to his vomit, and being fled over the sea, and sending from thence Tyndale's heresies hither with many mischievous sorts of books.

According to Moynihan, Thomas Moore also falsely charged him with having two wives, completely not true, and he was tortured, and then burned on November 27th. Moore also claimed that his death was no... He's trying to, that's the other thing. They're trying to diminish these people, discredit them. There's a social ostracization factor. They're psychological.

They're trying to wear you down. And after their death, they don't want them to become heroes. So he's basically saying he was a coward who would have objured again if he had been given the choice and describes his death briefly as well and worthily burned. Later that month, Moore claimed another victim, John Tewkesbury, who more noted was burned as there was never wretch, I wean better worthy. The word wean there is a middle English word meaning to believe or to have an opinion. Tewksbury, he really did not like to, I mean, Moore did not like any of these people. He really did not like Tewksbury. Tewksbury had been converted through

Tyndale's writings, and Moore is saying he's a very obstinate and so forth. You can see him pictured here after his first arrest, carrying a bundle of sticks as a part of his earlier punishment. And Moore had a personal distaste for him. He kept him in his own personal house. And so there's a big debate about whether more personally tortured him. I won't go rely on anything that is not, that is contested in this video, so let's not assume anything about that. We don't know. But the account of the particular kind of torture is similar to what one other person said about more with another victim. So, subsequently then he's held in the Tower of London before his burning on December 20th.

Next, Thomas Moore went after James Bainham, a lawyer and Tyndale sympathizer. Once again, there's dispute about whether Moore tortured him. Fox claimed that Moore basically made him lame through torture. And some scholars like Moynihan take that as credible, others don't. What is certain is that Bainham was kept in prison and he's under pressure in some way or another. Now, part of that is, again, we forget it,

we always think of the physical pain. We forget all the relational and social, ramifications of these episodes. Bainham had just gotten married. He was wealthy. And his wife had also been taken all their goods confiscated. Now, in the medieval era, I don't like to tell you this, but it's true. The men were often burned at the stake, but the women were often buried alive. And so you have to remember, he's in great fear of the danger to his wife right now. And so he caves in after about a month and a half, February of the next year, and he recants. And for his penance, he has to pay this huge fine, and then he has to stand during the sermon at a church in London with a bundle of wood

on his shoulder, which obviously the symbolism of that would be lost upon no one, himself included. This is another one of the brutal dynamics of this persecution. You think of the physical suffering, but also the kind of the psychological, the way they're trying to break you down, you know? Like Bilney, Bainham's conscience is torturing him after this. for giving in. You can just see how this can play out realistically. You know, you cave in and then you feel terrible about it. So not even a month later, he comes back to a large church, raises up Tindale New Testament, and confesses all to everybody that he's denied God. He doesn't even try to run. Like Billney, he just accepts his fate. He actually writes a letter to the Bishop of London

explaining what he's done. He's, of course, arrested, interrogated. At his interrogation, he states his belief in the power of God's word translated, quote, the New Testament now translated into English, doth preach and teach the Word of God. And before that time, men did preach, but only that folks should believe as the church did believe. And then, if the church erred, men should err too. You can see how the concern here is that the ignorance of the Word of God leads to a kind of lack of accountability unto the scripture. He's burned at the stake on April 30th at Smithfield in London. Thomas Moore notes that Bainham, along with other heretics, was received into hell to burn forever.

To the extent that you start to get a worry about a kind of gleeful celebration of burnings, both temporal and eternal, from Thomas Moore, it's pretty sobering to realize this man is a saint and the patron saint of politicians. After Daniel records this episode, he says about Thomas Moore, his fanatical even frenzied loathing for someone showing even the merest suggestion of heresy does perhaps make a reader think a little about the qualities normally expected in a saint in the Catholic Church. So Bainham is burned on April 30th, 1532. At this point, Moore's persecution of Tyndale sympathizers has a major setback in that the conflict between Henry VIII and the Pope is escalating. Two years

later, there's the official break. But Moore sees the handwriting on the wall, and he resigns from his position as Lord High Chancellor. He keeps on hunting Tyndale, though. At this time, we don't even, nobody knows where Tyndale is in 1532. But Moore is able to find and burn his dearest friend, John Frith. I might do an entire video on Frith. He is such a fascinating character. For now, we'll just note that he's arrested later in 1532, imprisoned in the Tower of London and burned at the stake the following summer. Now, one of the brutal aspects is waiting for it, long time to wait. Tyndale writes a letter during that time to encourage him and says, dearly beloved, fear not men that threat, nor trust men that speak fair. But,

trust him that is true of promise and able to make his word good. Your cause is Christ's gospel, a light that must be fed with the blood of faith. If we be buffeted for well-doing, we suffer patiently and endure. That is thankful with God, for to that end we are called. Then he's going on, he's quoting scripture, he's quoting 1st Peter 3, that even Christ was called to suffer in this way. Then, countenancing the prospect of burning, he says, if the pain be above your strength, remember, whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, I will give it to you, and pray to your father in that name, and he will ease your pain or shorten it. I find it so poignant that Tyndale is able to encourage his friend with the very scriptures he himself had translated. Tindale also tells him, by the way, this very same day,

two other Protestants had suffered the same fate in Antwerp, four in Flanders, and one in Lege, which is another city in Belgium. So he's saying, you're not alone in this. You feel alone, but you're not alone. He closes his letter with these poignant words. Sir, your wife is well content with the will of God and would not, for her sake, have the glory of God hindered. After this, Tyndale is able to produce a revised version of the New Testament. He keeps on going. He had already published a translation of the Pentateuch, but his, as we've mentioned, his work on the rest of the Old Testament is interrupted. Eventually, Tyndale is betrayed by a man named Henry Phillips. There's a huge drama about this. We don't know who was paying Phillips. And so there's a big question about that. That's excited a lot of

discussion in these various books. Well, I won't really get into that here. I don't know. I have no idea who was funding his betrayal. But it's also kind of curious. Why did he stay in Antwerp after 1534 rather than return to England, where arguably he might have been safer, given the changing political scenery there? Perhaps, though, I can understand it. He's seen so many of his friends go to England and die, he's been safe in Belgium for many years, so I can get it. After he's seized, he's imprisoned in a castle six miles north. You can read his letters requesting a warmer coat and a hat, simple things like this. You see the very human experience he's having. It's a very cold and wet place. He's, whatever he's working on at this time, he's working on things. We think he's translating

the historical books, but they didn't make it. They were destroyed. And his friends try to get him out, and they are unable to help. Tindale's inquisitors carry on this long dispute with him on topics like justification by faith alone, purgatory, praying to the saints, images, papal supremacy, scripture versus tradition, and so forth, all the usual Protestant versus Catholic talking points. But it's not a fair fight, as Daniel puts it. This is a match in which the result had been decided beforehand. There was no way in the world by which Tyndale could win. The power dynamics of this are absolutely brutal. It's one versus 17. The Roman Catholic commissioners tasked with his Inquisition included three theologians, four lawyers, and nine others, and it's taking place while

he's in jail, in bad conditions. Some of the interrogations occur in his very jail cell. Tyndale is condemned by the Roman Catholic authorities as a heretic in early August, 1536, and then executed that October. From several eyewitness testimonies, we can reconstruct both his execution as well as his earlier ceremony of ministerial degradation, both of which would be held publicly in front of a large crowd to terrify would-be heretics. At his ministerial degradation, three bishops are seated, elevated high on a wooden platform, and Tyndale is brought forward in the vestments of a priest and forced to kneel before them. His hands are scraped with a knife, symbolically removing the oil with which he had been anointed at his consecration.

The sacraments are placed in his hands and then stripped away with solemn curses. Other curses then follow as his stole and chascible are stripped away. These are his priestly vestments, and then he's reclothed as a layman. The final curse is simple. We commit your soul to the devil. His execution comes in October, an account of which I'll simply read from Daniel's biography. quote, we are to imagine a large crowd held back by a barricade. In the middle of the circular space, two great beams were raised in the form of a cross,

with at the top iron chains and a rope of hemp passing through holes in the beams. Brushwood, straw, and logs were heaped nearby. At a set time, the procurer general and his colleagues on the commission came and sat on prepared chairs within the circle. The crowd parted to let the guards bring the prisoner through the barricade. As they crossed the space and approached the cross, the prisoner was allowed a moment to pray, and with a last appeal for him to recant. Then he alone moved to the cross, and the guards busily knelt to tie his feet to the bottom of the cross. Around his neck the chain was passed, with the hemp and noose hanging slack.

The brushwood, straw, and logs were packed close round the prisoner, making a sort of hut with him inside. A scattering of gunpowder was added. The executioner went to stand behind the cross and looked across at the Procureer General. It is at this moment, most probably, that Tyndale cried, Lord, opened the King of England's eyes. When the Procureer General was ready, he gave the signal, and the executioner quickly tightened the hempen noose, strangling Tyndale. The procurer watched Tyndale die, and as soon as he judged him dead, he reached for a lighted wax torch being held near him, took it and handed it to the executioner who touched off the straw, brushwood, and gunpowder. Unfortunately, some reports of eyewitnesses say that the strangler failed to do his job, and Tyndale was thus not dead when the fire began, and thus he suffered terribly. It's like, you have one job to do, you know?

This is the end of William Tyndale, but not his legacy and not his cause. Final thoughts. Three things. Number one, let's not take the Bible for granted. We could easily have been born at a time when we would not have access to it. and that should motivate us to read it and be grateful for it. Number two, we need more study of Tyndale and his friends. His life and work is an area of neglect.

There's not as much scholarship as you'd expect on him. We need more people working on this. And if you want to read more about him, I just recommend starting off his own writings and perhaps some of those of Frith as well. Sometimes they're sold together. And number three, we should be inspired by Tyndale's example. I admire his passion to spread the knowledge of scripture,

and I agree with his conviction, the knowledge of scripture furthers the knowledge of the gospel. There are still over 3,000 languages that need a Bible translation today, or at least that don't have ones. Granted, some of those may die out soon, so maybe some more than others are needed. But in some respects, I would say what is needed more than translation is teaching and evangelism. Biblical ignorance is a huge problem in our day, including within the church. And so, you know, we should do everything we can to get the gospel out there, that same

impulse, my final thought, that same impulse that Tyndale had that he says, I want everybody to know the scriptures. That's what we should have today, and that's why even mediums like YouTube, what I want to do with Truth Unites is I want it to reach into different areas where people aren't necessary. That's why I'm trying to translate scholarship out into the, you know, and other things where it may not be as previously known. Let me know what you think of this in the comments, and let's do more work on Tyndale. If you like this video, please help me spread the word. please help me get it out there and so forth. You know all the ways that can happen.

And if you'd like to support Truth Unites and the work that I'm doing, you can do so either on the website or via Patreon. Monthly supporters get early access. I do regular meetings with supporters and so forth. Thanks for watching this video. And I think my closing thought is, may the terrible sufferings that have occurred in the Christian church in our past, may we not deny them, may we not weaponize them,

may we grieve over them, but then may we learn from them. And to learn from them, we need to know what really happened. And that's how I hope this video will help. So thanks for watching, everybody.