The Foxe's Fire at Vilvoorde

On an October morning in 1536, guards led William Tyndale from his cell in Vilvoorde Castle near Brussels to a stake surrounded by bundled wood. His crime was translating the New Testament into English — putting the gospel into the language of plowboys and merchants. For eleven years, Tyndale had lived as a fugitive, smuggling hand-printed Bibles across the English Channel hidden in bales of cloth. Church authorities burned every copy they could find. King Henry VIII wanted Tyndale dead.

At the stake, Tyndale spoke his final recorded words: "Lord, open the King of England's eyes."

Within two years, Henry VIII authorized an English Bible — based largely on Tyndale's own translation — to be placed in every parish church in England. The very words powerful men tried to silence were suddenly read aloud in thousands of villages. Farmers heard the gospel in their own tongue. Children memorized scripture at their mothers' tables.

Tyndale understood what Paul declared in Romans 1:16: the gospel is the power of God for salvation. Not a fragile idea needing the protection of gatekeepers, but an unstoppable force that transforms everyone it reaches. Tyndale was not ashamed of it — not when he fled across Europe, not when chains bound his wrists, not when flames consumed his body. He staked his life on the conviction that when ordinary people encounter the gospel, the power of the Almighty does the rest.