God’s Bestseller

I highly recommend this book for every pastor and Christian. It will help the reader to gain a better understanding of important events and figures in Church history and to gain an appreciation for the sacrifices made to ensure that we could have God’s Word available in the English language. The book includes the sub-title of “William Tyndale, Thomas More, and the Writing of the English Bible—A Story of Martyrdom and Betrayal.” As the sub-title suggests, this book is not only a biography about Tyndale, it also provides detailed information on Thomas More and other leaders in the Catholic Church who thought it their divine duty to silence the life and work of Tyndale.

Tyndale was consumed with a passion to get the Scriptures printed in English and distributed to everyone who wanted a copy of God’s Word in their own tongue. In one famous exchange with a learned man who was defending the authority of the pope, Tyndale as a young man replied, “If God spare my life, ‘ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the Scripture than thou dost.” Tyndale would go on to sacrificially give his life and personal finances to this monumental task.

The book also examines the profound impact that the invention of the printing press played in helping to make the Scriptures more available in English. Certainly it was Providential timing to have a man of Tyndale’s qualifications arise at the time of the invention of this world-changing technology.

This book instills a profound respect for the courageous stand that Tyndale, and others like him, took against the Catholic Church by exposing the doctrinal errors and fallacies within the Catholic Church. In October of 1536, at the direction of the Catholic Church and the civil authorities in England, Tyndale was strangled and then burned at the stake as a heretic for his Bible translation work.

It is worth noting that the book begins with a powerful and informative preface entitled, On the Burning of Heretics, that provides the reader with the detailed account of the Catholic Church exhuming and burning the remains of John Wycliffe in 1428 (who had died 44 years earlier) as a sign of their contempt for those “heretics” who would dare to challenge the Catholic Church and translate the Scriptures into the common language of the English speaking people.

I know little about the personal faith or theology of the author, Brian Moynahan, but I am impressed with his detailed research and many of his pertinent insights in this important book. Pastors, this book is filled with incredible illustrations that you can use in preaching that will both underscore the importance of knowing Church history and provide very practical and relevant applications for today.