By Rev. Ted Nace

600 years ago, in the middle of the 14^th Century in England, America was still unknown. The printing press had not been invented. There were no streetlights, no railroads, no radios. There were no Presbyterians, no Methodists, no Baptists. But the people of England knew many important things. They knew how to grow food and build houses. They knew how to worship God.

A man named Wycliff was living in England. He wanted one more thing for his people. He wanted them to have a Bible they could read. But there were none. There was a Bible in the Greek language. There was a Bible in the Latin language. But the people could not read Greek or Latin and only the churches owned copies of these Bibles. Wycliff declared, "The Bible belongs to the people and no one should be allowed to take it from them." The church leaders, however, argued that they were the ones to tell the people what was in the Bible. "If anyone," they said, "can turn the holy pages for his or herself, it may be that the Bible will be better known to common men and women than to the church leaders!"

Wycliff worked to write the Bible in English. At one time his work was interrupted. In 1378, he was arrested and tried for no other crime than wanting a Bible in English. Fortunately, he was not put in prison and he finished his translation. It was read all over England. Those who had money bought copies. Those who had no money would exchange a load of hay for permission to read it one hour a day. The very poor went to meetings where passages were read or recited from memory.

One hundred years later, America was still undiscovered, but Gutenberg had made his printing press and another Englishman, William Tyndale, also worked to give the people the Bible, to know and to love. He said, "If God spares my life, I will one day make the boy who drives the plow to know more of the Bible than the Pope himself."

Because he made an English Bible, Tyndale, like Wycliff, was arrested. Unlike Wycliff, William Tyndale was imprisoned and one day he was taken from prison, strangled and burned. As he died, he prayed, "Lord God, open thou the King of England’s eyes." Three years later, his prayer was answered, for the King’s eyes were opened and Bibles were placed in every church in England.

And so the Bible, our best friend, has come to us because of the dedication, the sacrifice and the courageous daring of great persons of faith through the centuries.

THE BIBLE IS OUR FRIEND BECAUSE THE BIBLE CALLS FOR CHANGE AND LIBERATION. It calls us to change from slavery to freedom. It calls us to change from unfaith, from doubt and fear and anger, to faith and trust and love. The Bible calls us to change and promises us vision and sight instead of blindness; healing and cleansing instead of disease; liberty and release instead of captivity and oppression. The call and promise are for now, today, this year – "The acceptable year of the Lord."

THE BIBLE IS OUR FRIEND BECAUSE THE BIBLE CALLS US TO ENDURANCE. It calls us to withstand the tribulations and the toil, the immorality, the cursedness and the idolatry. The Bible calls for our endurance and steadfastness in a cryptic language that the world cannot understand as it searches out for subversives, as in the Revelation to John. But the promise is glorious – "Be faithful unto death and I will give you the crown of life."

The Bible is our good friend and it is the good friend of others. Especially, it is the good friend of the imprisoned:

- Paul, who again and again was a prisoner, declared, even in his imprisonment, "We are sons of the free woman, Sarah, and not the slave woman."

- Martin Luther, under house arrest, so loved the Bible that he translated it into German so that the people could read and understand and have a friend.

- The Exiles in Babylon, how they wept by the waters of Babylon, away from the temple in Jerusalem. But they found a friend as they gathered to read the law and the traditions. There it was that the Bible began and the practice of the public reading of the Bible became the weekly practice of God’s people.

The Bible is the friend of prisoners of all centuries and it is our friend, not because it is the transcendent power, but because it points to THE transcendent power, with a word of hope and a word of promise.

(This article appeared in the "Winter, 1992-93" issue of "The Herald.")