When you think of miracles, what do you think about? Great healings? Abundant food? Space travel? Crying statues? I suggest that the smart phone you hold in your hand may be the greatest miracle! The YouVersion app, easily downloaded for free onto your mobile device, is a miracle unimaginable in the history of Christianity.
Let's go back to the early 400s. Latin has become the central language of the church. The books of the Old Testament, most of which had been originally written in Hebrew, had for centuries been translated into Greek. The New Testament also was originally written in Greek. By the early 5th century a new version was needed for the language of the day. Jerome translated the Bible into Latin - what is now known as the Vulgate. He wasn't the first to do this, but he was the first to go back to the original Hebrew language for the Old Testament. This was controversial with Christians of Jerome's day, because the Greek translation (The Septuagint) had been considered to be inspired. Despite this controversy the Latin Vulgate version of the Bible served as the primary text for more than a thousand years.
Enter John Wycliffe in 1382, an advocate for translating the Vulgate Bible into the common English tongue. Wycliffe thought that English people should be able to read the Word of God in English! Hear the cries of his enemies: "The jewel of the clergy has become the toy of the laity." Wycliffe was declared a heretic in 1415. All his books and translations were burned. Not satisfied with the fact that Wycliffe had already died, the Council of Constance ordered his remains exhumed and burned them along with all his written work.
John Tyndale was the first to translate the Bible into English from the original Hebrew and Greek languages and not from the Latin Vulgate. Combined with the advent of the printing press the Tyndale Bible was mass produced... and mass destroyed by both the state and the church! Tyndale wrote much of his translation while running for his life. He was eventually imprisoned, strangled, and then - though already dead - his body was burned. His body's ashes were added to the ashes of his Bibles.
These stories of the great miracles of Bible translations are too many for this modest blog post. Each translation was hard fought and often cost the lives of the translators. These men had one thing in common: their belief that the Word of God should be available for all men in all languages. It's hard for us to imagine today, but at one time the Bible was chained to the table in the church so that it could not be taken and read by just anyone not properly trained to understand it.
Stop and marvel at the gadget you hold in your hand. You thought it was just a smart phone. Sure, it will make a phone call for you. You can send a text or an email. You can check up on the news of the day or watch a Netflix movie. You could even read this Church Requel blog post!
The BIG DEAL in mobile communications is that you hold God's Word in your hand! Any time you want - without any thought to personal risk against you or your family - you can read or listen to your Bible. AND you can choose any one of 25 English versions and/or 44 different languages. That adds up to "miracle" in my book!
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