Today, 90% of the King James Version of the Holy Bible and 75% of the Revised Standard Version are from the translation made by Tyndale, a man to whom you owe more than you’ll ever know.
A graduate of Oxford and Cambridge, Tyndale had a burning desire to make the Bible available to even the common people in England, in order to correct the ‘Biblical ignorance of the priests’. At one point Tyndale told a priest, “If God spares my life, ere many years pass, I will cause a boy that driveth the plow shall know more of the Scriptures than thou dost.”
Eventually, Tyndale was betrayed by
Henry Phillips to the
imperial authorities, seized in Antwerp in 1535, and held in the castle of
Vilvoorde (Filford) near
Brussels. He was tried on a charge of heresy in 1536 and was condemned to be burned to death, despite
Thomas Cromwell's intercession on his behalf. Tyndale "was strangled to death while tied at the stake, and then his dead body was burned".
His final words, spoken "at the stake with a fervent zeal, and a loud voice", were reported as "Lord! Open the King of England's eyes."