Timeline of the Protestant Reformation

Posted on by

Transcript (slightly edited) of an excerpt from a message by Dr. Steve Lawson entitled “William Tyndale and the English Reformation” November, 2017 – original source – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWtWdAGjj4s – from the 7 minute 40 second mark)

If I could take a brief moment and help you just trace the flow of the Reformation. In its most simplest terms, the Reformation went from the German Reformation, to the English Reformation, to the Swiss Reformation, to the Scottish Reformation.

That is the flow of the stream of the Reformation. And there was one man in each of those four Reformations who became the point man, who became the chief influencer.

And in Germany it was Martin Luther.

In England it was William Tyndale.

In the Swiss Republics it was John Calvin.

And in Scotland it was John Knox.

In its simplest form, that is the flow of the Reformation.

Let me give you some dates.

Martin Luther was born in 1483. John Knox died in 1572. That is the tightest little brackets to put around the Reformation.

In reality, the Reformation continued in England under the Elizabeth reign, Elizabeth I, in England, which eventually became the birth of the Puritan era. But to understand the Reformation, you just simply need to walk from Luther to Tyndale, to Calvin, to Knox. And one man influenced the next, influenced the next, influenced the next. Let me try to create this for you in simplest terms before we look at Tyndale.

Martin Luther was born in 1483. He nailed his 95 theses in 1517. By his own admission, he was converted in 1519.

At that very same time, the greatest small group bible study in the history of Christendom was meeting across the English channel at Cambridge in the White Horse Inn. And in that small group Bible study was William Tyndale. And while Martin Luther was being converted and being summoned to the Diet of Worms, and while he was saying, ‘here I stand, I can do no other, God help me,’ God was raising up William Tyndale, who was reading Martin Luther.

The small group Bible study at Cambridge were reading the works of Martin Luther. In fact, that small group Bible study became known as ‘Little Germany’ and they would rock the English world.

In that small group Bible study were 9 martyrs, two of whom were burned at the same stake together. Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley, in which Hugh Latimer gave that all time famous line as they were being burned together at the same stake, ‘play the man, Mr. Ridley. We shall light a candle this day in England that shall never be extinguished.’

So they’re meeting in England at exactly the same time Luther is being converted and Luther is being summoned to the Diet of Worms. The flame is spreading to England and William Tyndale is coming to faith in Christ. And William Tyndale comes to the realization that the entirety of England is lost, with a few exceptions of Lollards and those who had been under the influence of the Lollards, who were the preachers sent out by John Wycliffe.

William Tyndale sets out on a mission, that is the most extraordinary mission – to translate the Bible into the English language. He would have to go underground for 12 years and live basically in a backroom closet and translate under candlelight the Bible into the English language. He would never marry. It would take him 12 years. He was burned, hung, and blown up in 1536. That is the very same year John Calvin went to Geneva.

One man steps off the scene, God has next man up.

And the very time that Tyndale is being martyred, Calvin is providentially being led to Geneva having no intention to go to Geneva. There was a roadblock in the middle of the night. He was forced to go to Geneva and he ended up staying and being the force of the Swiss Reformation.

Calvin went there in 1536. He was run out of town in 1538, he was run out of town in 1538. He was gone for three and a half years. He comes back in 1541. He remains for the next 23 years until 1564 when Calvin dies.

In 1553, there comes to the throne of England, Mary I, Mary Tudor, who became well known as Bloody Mary, for good reason. She put to death 288 Protestants – burned them at the stake. And the very first one she burned at the stake, I carry his picture in my preaching Bible. That’s 1553.

And because of the reign of terror that Bloody Mary unleashed upon England, English Reformers and people who were members of English Reformed Churches had to make a difficult decision. Do we stay and face being burned at the stake or do we flee for our life out of England? Many chose to stay, others chose to flee.

One of those who fled was a royal chaplain under Edward VI, the teenage Protestant King. His name was John Knox.

John Knox fled England for his life and he went to, of all places on planet Earth, he went to Geneva. And he sat at the feet of Calvin and was personally under the preaching – verse by verse – of John Calvin.

He was across the street at Calvin’s auditorium, which became in essence Calvin’s seminary in which men were being trained for ministry and were being sent out by waves to the nations. John Knox is now being personally trained and discipled through the pulpit ministry of John Calvin.

And when Bloody Mary mercifully dies in 1538, John Knox is now free to go from the feet of Calvin to his native homeland in Scotland and he hits Scotland like a category 5 hurricane. He hit Scotland like a tsunami would hit the beach. And he established within one year the Church of Scotland and the Reformation in Scotland went further than the Reformation in England.

But the point I want to make with you is there is an unbroken succession from Martin Luther to William Tyndale reading Martin Luther, and William Tyndale launching the English Reformation, to the year that he is martyred, John Calvin steps out of nowhere onto the pages of history and becomes the pastor of Geneva. And while Calvin is there through the persecution of Bloody Mary, it flushes John Knox out of England into the congregation of John Calvin, who (Knox) will then take the gospel and the message and the word of God to Scotland and give birth to the Scottish Reformation. It will be from there that it will be taken across the Atlantic to the colonies of my home country, America. And it will spread eventually around the world.

So just understand the domino effect. Understand the sequence.

Germany, England, Switzerland, Scotland. Luther, Tyndale, Calvin, Knox.

That is the simplest overview of the Reformation from 1517 to 1572, that little window of time.

Thoughts on Preaching

Posted on by

“Imagination in preaching means being able to understand the truth well enough to translate or transpose it into another kind of language or musical key in order to present the same truth in a way that enables others to see it, understand its significance, feel its power—to do so in a way that gets under the skin, breaks through the barriers, grips the mind, will, and affections so that they not only understand the word used but feel their truth and power.” – DSinclair Ferguson

“A good question for us as pastors to ask ourselves before we get up to preach is, ‘Would Jesus Christ have had to die on a cross for me to preach this sermon?'” – William Willimon

Reading the Prophets

Posted on by

Article by Bryan Estelle – original source here – https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/how-to-read-the-prophets

The Prophets are difficult to understand. In part, that is because God revealed Himself to them in dreams and visions. Only with Moses did God speak face to face (Num. 12:6–8). The Major Prophets include Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel. The Minor Prophets include Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. Here are several tips that will help you read and understand the Prophetic Books.

1. Investigate the context.

First, understand as much as possible about the historical occasion, the social setting, and the prophet you are reading. A good study Bible, such as the Reformation Study Bible, can help with this.

2. Recognize the role of the prophets as God’s covenant lawyers.

Second, recognize that the prophets were essentially God’s covenant lawyers. Although they spoke to many parts of the covenant—for example, the preamble and the historical prologue (“I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt”), and they often reminded the people of their responsibility to fulfill God’s commands (i.e., “stipulations”),—their primary purpose was to communicate the sanctions of the covenant. In popular parlance today, we tend to view sanctions as only negative (for example, “economic sanctions”). But in Scripture, sanctions can be positive or negative. In other words, blessings for obedience, and curses or punishment for disobedience. Like good lawyers, the prophets compiled their suits against the king and/or the people and preached to them about how they had failed to live up to God’s standards.

3. Learn to be aware of the prophetic idiom.

The prophetic idiom is an important aspect of how the Prophets speak of future realities. Here, the central thesis is that the Prophets, which continually talk about the maintenance of and arrangements of Israel and the tribes, their land, and their temple, are very often describing new covenant realities yet to come. Therefore, the reader should constantly be asking the questions, “Are the contemporary matters surrounding the prophet, what he is really talking about? Or, is he speaking of future realities?” The prophetic idiom, therefore, is that manner of expression by which the prophets of the Old Testament use the typological configuration of the things of Israel in order to portray the Messianic realities of the new covenant age. This is the nature of the prophetic idiom, and if we do not recognize it, then we will misunderstand the Prophets.

This is what Paul knew well, even in his appeal before Agrippa (Acts 26:19–29). Paul appeals to the prophets, that they speak about Christ and Paul’s mission to the gentiles. The language of the prophets, the kind of figurative idiom in which they express themselves, demands (especially for the new covenant believer) separating the external idiom from the reality of the new covenant promises.

In short, in the prophetic idiom, the prophets are often describing the new covenant in the terms of the circumstances of the institutions of the old covenant. The language of prophecy, the imagery the prophets use, the idiom they use in their descriptions, is often used to portray what is going to happen in Christ Jesus and to all of humanity. This becomes important, for example, in the descriptions of exile and scattering, the gathering of the tribes, the return to the land, and the form that the curses take. Although the prophets do not speak with omniscience with regard to the future, they do often speak of the certainty of God’s coming in Jesus Christ, the new covenant, and even to the second advent of our Lord, without distinguishing all the parts from one another. Nevertheless, there is still an integral unity to the various stages about which they speak under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

For example, when Joel speaks about the outpouring of the Spirit and the images of the great and terrible coming day of the Lord, it was not only his original audience to whom he was speaking (Joel 2:28–32). Joel 2 is quoted in Acts at Pentecost (Acts 2:17–21). The same images expressed in Acts 2:28–32 are also evident at Christ’s crucifixion. One could even legitimately argue that Joel’s prophecy finds ultimate expression in the second coming of our Lord. Therefore, although Joel had a single intent, his words find many references (i.e., “landing points”) throughout redemptive history. That is why this passage about the outpouring of the Spirit was one of John Calvin’s favorite passages for explaining how the prophetic idiom works.

4. Hunt for ways in which the New Testament Scriptures cite, allude to, or echo the Prophets.

Fourth, and finally, since Christ told His disciples on the road to Emmaus that all the Scriptures spoke about Him and His ministry (or by extension His body, which is the church), we should always be on the hunt for ways in which the New Testament Scriptures cite, allude to, or echo the Prophets. For example, Peter (having been a witness to the transfiguration) realized that the foundational passage in Deuteronomy 18:15–19, which speaks about Moses as the paradigmatic prophet of all subsequent prophets, found its ultimate homecoming in Christ as the final prophet (see Acts 3:17–26). This interpretation is confirmed further by the writer to the book of Hebrews, who understood that Moses was faithful as a servant over his house (the old covenant) but Christ is faithful as a son over His house; that is, the new covenant. Moreover, God is the builder of the entire house, old and new (Heb. 3:1–6).