John Calvin is the most influential pastor in church history. He wrote commentaries on nearly the entire Bible, which are still in print today. His systematic theology, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, is arguably the most significant Christian book ever published. Calvin was the architect of Protestant theology, and his teachings gave rise to modern government, public education, and even capitalism.

Calvin was first and foremost a preacher, generally giving six sermons a week. He moved the baptismal to the back of the church, and placed the pulpit in the middle, marking a change in the purpose of corporate worship – Christians would no longer gather for sacraments, but instead for the preaching of the Word.

Born north of Paris, he was converted to Christ in his 20’s and then forced to flee France – Protestants were not welcome there. He eventually settled in Geneva, where he spent the rest of his life pastoring. 

Under Calvin’s preaching, Geneva was reshaped. Refugees poured in from England, Scotland, and France, themselves fleeing persecution. So many came that Geneva’s population doubled under Calvin’s pastorate. He started a program to train men to return to their own countries as gospel preachers, and so many of his disciples became martyrs that this institute was known as “the Calvin school of death.”

Calvin died at age 54 – he simply burnt out. He outlived his wife, and three children, but his legacy still towers over church history.

Lady Jane Grey (1537-1554) is known as the nine day queen of England. A distant relative of Henry VIII, she spent much of her childhood in the king’s court, being groomed to marry Edward, the next-in-line for the throne. By age 7 both she and Edward knew Latin and Greek, and through reading the New Testament both had been converted to Christ.

Edward became king as a boy, died a few years later – likely poisoned by one of his advisers – resulting in Lady Jane becoming Queen. Jane knew nothing of the order of succession, and came to the throne reluctantly. But she realized that if she took a stand for Christ and against the Mass, she could leave a mark on England.  

After only nine days, Jane was betrayed by her father and overthrown by her Spanish (and Catholic) cousin, Mary. Imprisoned, she was offered mercy if only she would take the Mass. Instead she publicly debated Mary’s chaplain about transubstantiation. By all accounts the seventeen-year-old girl won the debate, for which she would lose her life. She was beheaded shortly thereafter.

Jane’s legacy is seen in the fact that after Bloody Mary’s death, England would never again be a Catholic nation. English history was forever changed by the gospel-fueled martyrdom of a teenage queen.

William Tyndale is known as the Apostle of England.

A linguistic genius—he was proficient in at least eight languages—he made it his life’s goal to translate the Bible from its original languages into English, a feat never before accomplished. Forbidden from this task by both king and Church, Tyndale fled England at age 30 to live the rest of his life as an outlaw.

He first hid in Germany where he sat under Luther’s preaching and studied the newly completed German Bible. When Tyndale started his translation, he needed a city with a printing press, a paper mill, only loose Catholic control, and along a river so he could export his work back to England. He settled on Worms, where Luther stood trial a decade earlier. When Tyndale was run out of Worms, he fled to Antwerp. There shippers smuggled his Bibles into England, where they were sold from the docks, all against the King’s direct orders. 

Eventually, Tyndale’s operation was infiltrated by an English spy. He was betrayed, kidnapped, and spent five-hundred days in a Brussels dungeon where he nearly froze to death. He was then paraded through town, formally excommunicated, and hung to death by a chain as he was hoisted onto a wooden cross. His body was then covered in gun powder and the cross was lit on fire, causing his corpse to explode.

His last words were “Lord, open the king of England’s eyes.”

Martin Luther is widely known as the architect of the reformation. On October 31, 1517, Luther famously nailed 95 theses on the castle door of Wittenberg as a “protest” against the Pope and the selling of indulgences. As a monk in the Roman Catholic Church, Luther lived a miserable life. No matter how hard he worked, or how much he fasted and prayed, he never felt like he was righteous enough to earn God’s favor. Years of hard work and even a trip to Rome couldn’t assuage his guilt. The rescue Luther sought would be found in the pages of Scripture. As he studied, Luther became convinced that salvation could never come by his inadequate attempts at atonement, but can only be received as a gift from a gracious God who declares sinners righteous through the blood of Christ alone by faith alone. Luther declared later that this was the moment he was born again. Luther’s fame as a theologian and apologist grew, but his love for God’s word burned brightest. Following the example of John Wycliffe, he went on to translate the Bible into German so that the gospel which had rescued him would be available to all. Luther died in his hometown of Eisleben, Germany in 1546, nearly thirty years after he struck the nail which launched the Protestant Reformation, but his example continues to inspire believers around the world.

Today’s hero: John Huss (1369-1415):

“Huss” means goose in Czech, and John Huss is known as the “goose that become a swan”. The story goes that before being burned at the stake for teaching that salvation is by faith not works, he declared that while his particular goose may be cooked, a swan would rise from his ashes 100 years later to confront the Catholic Church. Huss was born in poverty, but became a priest so that he could have an income. Later he found Wycliffe’s writings and through them was converted to Christ. He began preaching the gospel and soon became the most popular priest in Bohemia. The Catholic Church hated his popularity as much as they hated the gospel which he preached. A Church Council had been called to settle the papal schism – three (!) different Popes had been duly elected, each anathematized the others – and the Council of Constance was supposed to undo this. Instead they condemned Huss for preaching the gospel. Before burning him, they dressed him in his priestly robes, then stripped him naked, and placed a paper crown with mock flames and demons on his head. They burned him to death as he recited Psalm 51. One hundred years later, Luther would nail the 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg, and the Reformation would officially begin.

Did you know it’s been 500 years since the Protestant Reformation? For the next month or so I’m going to share some short biographies of some key reformers. Today: John Wycliffe (1320-1384):

“Trust wholly in Christ; rely altogether on his sufferings; beware of seeking to be justified in any other way than by his righteousness”

John Wycliffe is known as the first English reformer. He was a Priest in England when he began reading the Bible in Latin and saw how unbiblical Catholic doctrine had become. Meanwhile, the Pope had fled Rome for France and a rival Pope was elected – both of whom demanded the loyalty of all Christendom. Wycliffe refused, and encouraged others to do the same. Wycliffe recognised that the most effective way to oppose error was with the Scriptures, so he began the first ever English translation of the Bible. For this, he was declared a heretic by the Popes and placed under house arrest. There he died, but not before his translation had sowed the seeds of truth that would impact England for generations. Forty years after his death, the Church ordered his body exhumed and burned, then had his ashes dumped in the Swift River. But rather than stopping the Reformation, the truths that Wycliffe translated spread from England, across the sea, and into Europe, eventually resulting in what we call now the Protestant Reformation.