Dr Paul Allen

English: Statue of William Tyndale in the Victoria Embankment Gardens, London (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) William Tyndale 's final words before the chain around his neck strangled him to death were, "Lord, open the king of England 's eyes." That dying prayer was answered two years after Tyndale's death, when King Henry VIII ordered that the Bible of Miles Coverdale was to be used in every parish in the land. The Coverdale Bible was largely based on Tyndale's work. Then, in 1539, Tyndale's own edition of the Bible became officially approved for printing. Tyndale's translation inspired the great translations that followed, including the Great Bible (1539, also compiled by Coverdale), the Geneva Bible (1560), the Bishops' Bible (1568), the Douay-Rheims Bible (1582-1609), and the Authorized or King James Version (1611). A complete analysis of the King James shows that Tyndale's words account for eighty-four percent of the New Testament and...

Portrait of Ulrich Zwingli after his death 1531 (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Zwingli lived a tremendously full and productive life in spite of its temporal brevity. He wrote hundreds of tractates and books, many hundreds of letters, and preached thousands of sermons. He made incredible contributions to theology and his efforts on behalf of Reform laid the foundation for the work of his successor, Heinrich Bullinger , who can be rightly credited with taking the Reformed movement international. Indeed, Bullinger was more widely respected and followed around Europe in the 16th century than either Calvin or Luther . But the most remarkable contribution which Zwingli made to the Reformed movement was the contribution of a pious life piously lived.  Zwingli may be widely known as a warrior, as the man who died on the field of battle; but that is scarcely the real Zwingli. The real Zwingli will be discovered in his teaching on and practice of prayer; his firm conviction of th...

From "Baptizing in the Jordan" by Silas X. Floyd (1869-1923) (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) It was almost six years ago when a group of  fifteen Southern Baptist evangelists met together to bemoan the growth of Calvinism  within SBC circles. When asked about his concerns, Jerry Drace (the evangelist who initiated the meeting) explained that some Baptist pastors are so Calvinistic “that they almost laugh at evangelism. It’s almost to the extent that they believe they don’t have to do it. So [Calvinism] gives them an excuse not to do evangelism.” Drace’s comments raise an important question.  Does an affirmation of God’s sovereign election in salvation (commonly called “Calvinism”) deter people from faithfulness in evangelism? An answer to that question could be approached from several different angles. One could, for example, consider evangelistic efforts among Baptists — comparing those who embrace the doctrine of election with those who do not.  An S...

English: Avvakum in Siberia Русский: Путешествие Аввакума по Сибири (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Archpriest Avvakum was appalled. The Russian Orthodox church had an overbearing new Patriarch, Nikon. This zealot wanted to incorporate into the liturgy changes borrowed from the Roman church. As Avvakum and many others saw it, these changes threatened the purity of the old faith. Their protests were met with appalling cruelty. Tsarevna Sof'ya decreed that Old Believers were to be tortured. Any who remained "obstinate" were to be burnt to death. Avvakum became spokesman for the Old Believers. Fortunately for Russia, he was not immediately sentenced to death, but instead chained, imprisoned, beaten, spat upon and exiled to Siberia. He and his family survived by eating offal that wolves had rejected. Two of his sons died under these wretched conditions. Forced to join an expedition to Amur under a brutal leader, Avvakum spoke out against the cruelty. For this, he was flogg...

Richard I the Lionheart, King of England (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) God said to David's Lord, "Sit at My right hand till I make Your enemies Your footstool" (Mark 12:36). When we study the biblical narratives of the life and work of Jesus, as well as the apostolic commentaries on those narratives, we discover moments of supreme importance in terms of redemptive history. These include His birth, His death on the cross, His resurrection, the Day of Pentecost , and His return. However, there is an element in the work of Christ that we almost completely overlook. It is the session of Jesus. When Yahweh said to David's Lord, "Sit at My right hand," He was saying, "Be seated in the highest place of authority in the universe." Psalm 110 is a prophetic psalm, and David was saying by the Holy Spirit that when the Messiah had finished His labor in this world, He would be exalted to heaven and enthroned at the right hand of God. We declare that these thi...

A 1581 edition of the Geneva Bible. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) In 1553, Queen Mary ascended the British throne, which began a period of intense persecution of Protestants in England . More than 700 people fled England to escape persecution and settled in and around Geneva, Switzerland , in 1555. The refugees included Miles Coverdale , John Knox, and William Whittingham. Geneva in the 1550s was the center of Reformed Protestantism . And because of the presence of Theodore Beza , it was also a growing center of biblical scholarship. While there, the exiles began to see the need for a new translation of the Bible in their own language. The New Testament was finished in 1557, and the complete Bible—along with a revised New Testament—was finished in 1560. The Geneva Bible became the Bible of the common people The exiles began returning to England in 1558 when Elizabeth I ascended the throne, and they brought their Bible with them. The Geneva Bible soon became the prominent Bibl...

The beginning verses of the Gospel of John, from a facsimile edition of William Tyndale's 1525 English translation of the New Testament. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Tim Challies (Author) The moment Martin Luther nailed his “Ninety-Five Theses” to the door of the university chapel at Wittenberg, he set into motion a series of events that brought about a great Reformation. This Reformation would soon spread beyond Germany and as it did so, it would forever transform the Christian faith . One of the jewels of that Reformation is now in the collection of the British Library: William Tyndale ’s New Testament . It is the next of the twenty-five objects through which we are telling the history of Christianity. William Tyndale was born in 1494 in Gloucestershire, England . Born into a wealthy family he had the privilege of studying at Magdalen Hall, Oxford and at Cambridge. He was a brilliant scholar who was soon fluent in eight languages. At Cambridge he studied theology, but r...

English: Fogg Museum of Art, Harvard University. Photo by C. Szabla. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Universities sprang up in Medieval Christendom. Nothing like them had been seen in history, for not only did they concentrate teachers, they embraced the idea of set coursework whose requirements must be fulfilled before a specific degree was awarded. Students were periodically tested before being certified in their chosen subjects. Universities were modeled on guilds which trained and rated apprentices and journeymen and gathered members for mutual protection. The Christian ideal often tends to clump people together for mutual support in a body. Puritans, many of them university educated in England , brought the idea of a university to New England . "After God had carried us safe to New England, and wee had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, rear'd convenient places for Gods worship and setled the Civill Government: One of the next things we longed f...