[This is ab edited transcript to make it more easily read]

John Wycliffe and Jan Hus

On October the 31st 1517 a German monk called Martin Luther nailed his protest on the door of the Wittenberg church in Germany. These famous 95 theses, or protests, were meant to start a big debate with the church authorities of the time. Many people see this moment as the very beginning of what's now called the Reformation, and this is a very important point in history for us all to understand. It is, in part, a reason why we can gather together the way we do, and to have the Bible open in our hands, but to understand these momentous events in church history fully, we are going to look at the lives of two men who preceded Martin Luther and the Reformation. These two men were used by the Lord to serve their generation, and they took a stand against the culture of the day, and they built the true church. 

Now to appreciate these two men that we're about to talk about, we really need to delve into their world, because their world is so different to ours. We are going back to the late Middle Ages here, to the 1300’s and 1400’s. This was a period of time where there was only one church across all of Europe, and this is what we would know now as the Roman Catholic Church. There were no such things as other denominations at this time, and no matter where you were in terms of your class hierarchy, your whole life was dominated by the church institution. Every village had a church run by a parish priest, and the church really was thought to be the gateway to salvation. You confessed your sins to the priest. You were christened, married, buried by the priest. The church bells told you what time of day it was. You paid your taxes to the church, and that was funnelled all the way through to the Pope. 

In terms of teaching, well, the sermons that you heard on a weekly basis were all in Latin. And if you were not from the educated class, then you would not understand anything that was said. When the Bible was read out or recited. again, it was all in Latin. And so again, if you were not from the scholarly class, then you wouldn't understand anything. And the Word of God itself was shrouded in mystery - people didn't really know what the Bible said. In fact, most people had never seen a Bible. Bibles were so rare at this time that they were chained to walls in monasteries, and most people went through their lives without even sighting a Bible, let alone knowing what was in it. 

The head of the church at this time was the Pope, and he had ultimate spiritual authority over all the people. But during the Middle Ages, and particularly around this period, the pope also had a lot of political authority, and in some cases, there were certain popes who had more power than the kings and emperors - the those kings and emperors had to bow before the Pope. So in this situation, with the Pope and the church having political and spiritual authority over all the people in Europe, you can see how they could introduce a lot of traditions and ideas that were not from the Word of God. 

Now these traditions included lots of things. One invention was purgatory. This was a halfway point between heaven and hell. It was where you went to pay the penalty for your sins. If you lived a bad life, then you would spend longer in the torment of purgatory before making your way to heaven. This was an invention, and another were the relics. These relics and icons were used in worship. People made pilgrimages to go and have a look at a finger of a saint or a piece of skull of an apostle, or a piece of wood that may have come from Jesus’ cross, things like that. And they believed that making these pilgrimages would earn them some sort of divine power or grace, or maybe healing or forgiveness. And then icons which were artworks which originally were used to help people have some sort of focus in their worship, because so many people were illiterate and didn't understand anything of the scripture. But of course, as with human nature, the artworks themselves became the focus of devotion. 

One despicable invention by the pope during this medieval period was indulgences. These were slips of paper that were signed by the Pope or given by the Pope, and each had a set price based on the sin they were for. Buying these slips of paper, people were told, would rid them of the sin. You would earn forgiveness of sin if you bought the indulgence, and you could even buy one on behalf of a dead relative, and that way they would spend less time in purgatory. At certain times during the medieval period, the Pope would say things like, “If you join this war, then you will have forgiveness of all your sins.” And so people, peasants, knights and so on, jumped on board. They had nothing to lose. There was travel, adventure, the possibility of loot and the forgiveness of all their sins if they went to war. 

Another thing was the breaking of bread. This was very different. During this time in the mass, the church taught that the bread actually became the body of the Lord Jesus, and this was filled with so much of a sense of superstition that many of the common people who witnessed this week after week and knew nothing of what was being said in the Latin that were being spoken felt like this was some sort of magic, some sort of enchantment that was happening, and it fuelled even more superstition. 

If you were excommunicated, this was a very, very serious thing in this day, because you were put outside of the church institution. This was decreed by the Pope, so you couldn't just start attending a different church. There were no other churches. And you also wouldn't be able to christen your children. You wouldn't be able to get properly married or buried, and anyone who associated with you was also tarred with the same brush. You also couldn't make a business deal because oaths were taken and things had to be done in a church setting. But most terrifyingly, if you were excommunicated, you were damned to hell eternally, because the church held the power of salvation. 

This was the very real power of the church during this time that we're talking about. And the Pope did brutally crush people who rebelled or questioned the authority of the Church. And yet, strangely enough, during this time, the priests had a terrible reputation, and this was obvious to people. The hypocrisy was so overt. There were traveling monks called friars who were meant to travel from town to town and preach. These guys were notorious for sexual assault and for drunkenness. Priests were known to frequent brothels, and they had a reputation for greed and extorting money from people. In fact, in Dante's very famous work Inferno, he puts three popes in hell, a less than subtle comment on what he felt was the situation of the church at the time. But on the whole, the common people had no choice but to live under the authority of the Church institution, and because the church, essentially, for them, as they were told, held the keys to eternal life, and the people were kept in darkness and ignorance. 

And so we begin.

In around 1330, John Wycliffe was born. We don't know exactly the date, but he was born in Yorkshire in England. He was born to quite an ordinary family. We know very little about his early life, but it seems that his father wanted a good education for his son, and a good education in those days meant going to university and a career, probably in the church - a very lucrative career. Well, the only way to do that would be to travel from Yorkshire all the way to Oxford. And Oxford was the only place you could get a doctorate in theology to be part of the church. And so Wycliffe would have walked the 320 kilometres to Oxford at the start of the university year, and he would have stayed at the halls to study theology. He would have done philosophy and logic and law and, of course, all in Latin. And we know that he probably would have been around 14 or 15 years old at that time - that was the normal time to start university. 

Sometime during his time at Oxford University, Wycliffe experienced the Black Death. We don't know about his personal experience, but we do know that the Black Death came to Oxford, arriving in the city around 1348 when Wycliffe was there. Now, although the university itself wasn't closed, about a third of the population died, and so many masters and students died that functionally, the university wasn't really open and wasn't functioning at all. We don't know if Wycliffe went back home. We assume he did, but we can see that there would have been a huge impact on him from this period. Many people thought that the Black Death was the judgment of God, but then they were so confused, because if it really was the judgment of God, then why were all the priests and nuns and monks also dying? So many people were dying. In fact, so many priests died that one impact of the Black Death was that there were many positions vacant that needed to be filled very quickly.  People were put into the priesthood without much education, and soon people were reciting Latin that they didn't even understand. What we do know is that Wycliffe was preserved by God and he returned to Oxford to continue his study. 

Now John Wycliffe was a brilliant scholar, and after his undergraduate studies, he completed his doctorate in theology. In 1372 he went on to be master of Balliol College, and he was a very popular teacher. He would go on to be the university's leading theologian and philosopher. At that time Oxford was the leading university in the world, and Wycliffe, as its leading professor had influence, and he was well known. 

In order to finish his studies and to earn his doctorate, he had to give a series of lectures on the entire Bible, and as Wycliffe poured over the Bible in Latin, reading and studying it, he could see the way the church had misled the people. He could see that the teachings that he'd grown up with, and the things that he had learnt and understood from a young child didn't match what was written in the Scripture. His new understanding, today seem quite sound and reasonable, but at the time, his views were revolutionary and dangerous. At the centre of all spiritual teaching and authority at this time were the church and the Pope, and that was what he wanted to challenge. From reading the Scripture, he could see that the Bible had been distorted. 

First, he believed that God’s word was the true authority, and therefore the pope should submit to the authority of God and His Word. The pope didn't have any more authority than the priests. Guidance should come from God and His word alone. He also didn't believe that these slips of paper, the indulgences and even the confession to the priests were anything. They were meaningless. He said that only God forgives sin. It's so clear from the Scripture, only God can forgive sin and in terms of the breaking of bread, when he examined the Scripture, he could see that the bread did not become the body of Jesus. This was a very shocking belief at the time. 

He started calling out the clear corruption in the church. He spoke out against priests who were extorting money. They used to request extra payments. If you wanted the last rights, or if you wanted your child to be christened quickly, they would extort money, and people had to pay. They had no choice. Wycliffe started calling out these things, and he also started talking about the way that the priests were using money and their focus on material wealth, and about the church as a whole and its focus on material wealth. 

It so happened that at this particular time, the King of England and the Pope were having a dispute, and their dispute was about taxation. Wycliffe’s teaching that was starting to spread was particularly useful because Wycliffe was calling out the priests for their focus on material wealth, and the king of England thought that might be helpful. So Wycliffe had some very powerful backing. The king backed Wycliffe, and not only the king, but the Prince John of Gaunt, the son of King Edward III, was also a main supporter of Wycliffe. This protected Wycliffe for a time, and it meant that his teaching could continue. 

Well, these nobles didn't protect Wycliffe because they believed what he said was biblical truth. They were using him for political gain. But it did mean that Wycliffe was able to speak for longer than otherwise. But as with everything of an earthly nature, that political backing was soon lost. The prince, John of Gaunt, lost his position, and Wycliffe was vulnerable. 

By this time, Wycliffe's teaching had spread and come to the ear of Pope Gregory XI in Avignon, France, and in 1377 he sent a decree to arrest Wycliffe. He sent it directly to the university, threatening the university, saying, “How can you have a professor of his renown speaking such error, that it reflects on the university?” It was an underhand threat to the university. Wycliffe was immediately arrested and imprisoned briefly in Oxford, but the chancellor at the time was a good friend, and he said that technically it wasn't heresy, so he managed to release Wycliffe. In Wycliffe's life, he was arrested and tried three times, or he was called to trial three times, and each time he was released for various reasons, sometimes nothing to do with him. He was also summoned to Rome to appear before the pope twice, but he never went. 

It was very clear to Wycliffe from these censures that he could no longer teach publicly, and he was not welcome at Oxford. They were too scared to have him within their walls, and he had to leave. But by this time, he had quite a considerable following, many students and even other masters at Oxford believed that he was right about the authority of the Church really is in the Word of God and not in a person or in the institutions and traditions. 

This was now the year 1381, and Wycliffe had to withdraw to Lutterworth, a small town where he would be Rector of a church called St Mary's. Here he was out of the public eye, but it was here in Lutterworth that he and his followers began his greatest work, a work for which he is perhaps most renowned. Wycliffe believed that the scripture had authority and that it was the foundation of everything. He believed that everybody should have access to it. His big project was to translate the whole Bible into English so that the common people could read it for themselves.

Now, at this time, he only knew Latin, and he only had the Latin Bible, and so that's what he used. He translated the Latin Bible. He didn't work alone on this. He had a lot of students and other colleagues working with him. It was like a big team effort. Sources suggest that he probably translated the four Gospels, but we don't know that for sure. There were a lot of people involved in that translation. There must have been wealthy patrons too, because paper itself, or vellum, was so expensive, and the ink and they were handwriting everything. So there must have been a lot of people involved in this translation work. It was all completed in just one year, in 1382, and soon the Bible was made available, though the printing press had not yet been invented - that would be a century later - and so every copy was handwritten. It took months to do this with much hard work put into it. Soon they were also doing little leaflets. They were copying out passages of scripture on leaflets so that they could distribute it to more people. All this work was illegal and attracted a death penalty, as the Archbishop of Arundel wrote, “That pestilent and most wretched Dr Wycliffe, a child of the old devil and a pupil of Antichrist, crowned his wickedness by translating the scriptures into the mother tongue.”

Although this was the first complete translation into English, it would not be until 1526, some 144 years later, that William Tyndale would translate the Bible from the original Hebrew and Greek, and into a far more readable and recognizable English. John Wickliffe translated it into an English we can hardly read, Middle English, but Tyndall translated it in a way that even we can read his translation. Tyndall translated the Bible at the time that the printing press had been invented, and so that translation was distributed far and wide. 

Wycliffe encouraged his followers to spread God's Word now that they had it in English. People could read it in English and it could be recited in English so people could understand. He wanted the Word of God to go out so a lot of his students who were following him he sent out into the various towns and villages around England. 

Consistent with his view that the church should not be focused on material wealth, these people dressed simply, often in the brown Catholic robes, and they travelled from town to town. They handed out the little leaflets with passages of scripture on them. They recited passages of scripture in marketplaces and village squares, and these people became so recognizable that they earned the nasty nickname of Lollards. The word Lollard meant mumbler, so it was as if they were speaking rubbish again, or it could have been the fact that many of these guys, when they were walking along the roads, were reciting the scripture to memorize it. It was like they were mumbling under their breath. 

The Lollards did travel far and wide and handed out these leaflets with passages of Scripture, and in this very small way, soon, people started hearing the Word of God for the very first time. So imagine living in this hard world where you were held hostage by the institution of the Church and its traditions. And where, as a poor peasant, you would have to choose between buying bread for your family or buying the forgiveness of sins, where superstition and death was rife, and you knew that you were excluded from understanding anything in the Scripture because you were poor and because you didn't have an education, and then you hear for the very first time the words of Jesus. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” You hear this, and you realize that Jesus spoke these very words to ordinary people like you. And then you hear the parables, and you see how relatable they are about fields of wheat, sowers going out to sow seed, sheep lost in the mountains. And you hear that women and children sat at Jesus feet and heard from Him and were received gladly. 

Translating the Bible sealed Wycliffe’s fate. How dare he make it possible for ordinary people to gain access to the Holy Scripture? Well, the church institution at that time equated this with throwing pearls before the swine, and they said that these common people would trample the pearls underfoot. But before the church could arrest Wycliffe and execute him, he suffered a stroke, and he died peacefully in his home on New Year's Eve in 1384.

But Wycliffe's death, although convenient for the church, was not enough. The church needed to make an example of him. Decades later, in 1415, the Council of Constance was held. This was a huge gathering and a very long gathering - it took several years, a long gathering of bishops and cardinals, nobles, kings and Popes. This gathering decreed that all Wycliffe’s works should be burned, and they wanted to exhume his remains and burn them, destroy his grave and throw his remains into the river so that his memory would be erased. He was to be declared a heretic. All this did happen. His grave was dug up. His bones were burned and thrown into the river Swift and they also passed a ruling that anyone who agreed with Wycliffe, who read the scripture in English, or was in possession of any scripture written in English, would not only forfeit their lives, but would also forfeit their land, their livestock, their goods, and it would be taken away from their heirs as well, leaving them destitute for generations. This was the punishment decreed by the church for anyone who dared read or enable anyone to read the Word of God in English. 

Despite this, the Lollards continued their work traveling around England. There was a small work, seemingly insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and so many began to be persecuted and killed. They, of course, were enabling people to hear and read the scripture in English. And so many of them were arrested, burnt at the stake, beaten, and although some of Wycliffe’s handwritten bibles do still remain, much of Wycliffe’s work was burnt and destroyed. But the word of God is living and active, and Wycliffe’s memory was certainly not erased. In God's sovereignty, the torch that Wycliffe and the Lollards held forth boldly was certainly not snuffed out, but was passed along. 

In 1382 Anne of Bohemia married Richard II of England. This forged a union between Bohemia and England, and Anne was a very pious believer. She owned several copies of the Bible, which was very unusual in those days. She also established a connection between the University of Prague and the University of Oxford, and she encouraged students to do exchanges. One such person who did this was Jerome of Prague. He had travelled to Oxford, and he had studied under Wycliffe. He had been very moved by Wycliffe’s work, and he had copied out many of Wycliffe’s writings and translated them into Czech, the language of Bohemia.  

Now far away from England, Jan Hus was born in the village of Husinec in southern Bohemia, which is modern day Czechoslovakia. We know very little about his family, because he was born into a very ordinary, perhaps a poor family. We don't know exactly his date of birth. We think it was around 1371 which is perhaps a decade before Wycliffe died. But Jan Hus’ name is quite memorable. In Czech, Hus means goose, so if we were to translate his name into English, it would be John Goose. Thankfully, he had a sense of humour, and he would often poke fun at himself, calling himself a goose and a silly goose and things like that. He studied at the University of Prague, and his family chose for him to go into the church as a career, because it was a stable and very lucrative career. You didn't need to do too much work, and you earned a lot of money. He earned his master's degree in 1396 and then was ordained in 1400. Soon he was appointed rector of the University of Prague, and he was sent to a chapel in the middle of Prague to be the main Rector there. Sometime during this period, he saw an artwork that depicted the Lord Jesus wearing a crown of thorns, and then on the other side was the pope wearing the robes and a crown of gold. It struck Jan Hus as he looked and he said, “How is it that the followers of this man, Jesus, who wears a crown of thorns, can be happy to wear a crown of gold?” It struck him that there was inconsistency. He saw it in his own heart. The very reason he wanted to go into the church as a career was for the money. But he looked around and he saw that the church was built on power and wealth, and this was not consistent with the person of Jesus. At the same time, he had come across John Wycliffe's writings. They'd been brought into Prague by Jerome who we mentioned before and others who had studied in England. And as Hus studied the Scripture and he looked at the writings of Wycliffe, he was convinced that this was truth. He started using Wycliffe's writings in his own lectures. He copied out a lot of Wycliffe’s treatises. 

Jan Hus and John Wycliffe were not adding anything new. In fact, what they felt was that they needed to take away all the extra traditions and bring people back to the Scripture. They felt that all these extraneous things were misleading the people, and they wanted everyone to come back to the Word of God and the true gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, but what they were teaching sounded to many people, so radical and so different, because they had another understanding of the Bible and church.

While Jan Hus was rector of the university, he was assigned to preach at the Bethlehem chapel in Prague. This place was very unusual. Firstly, it was massive, it could seat 3000 people. But it was also unique because wealthy patrons had built this place on the proviso that the speaking there would be in the national language of Czech and not Latin. They wanted people to hear the Word of God. Bethlehem means “house of bread”. People would come here to be fed from the Word of God. 

Jan Hus was the pastor and he really did care for the people and wrote many letters of encouragement which we have today, but his main influence in Prague was his preaching. He preached twice on Sundays, sometimes many other days of the week. Sources say that he preached well over 3000 sermons, which averages out at about 290 sermons a year, for a decade. His prolific preaching meant that his influence spread through Prague, and just like Wycliffe, he called out the corruption of the Church and its focus on material wealth. He wanted the Bible to be at the centre and the authority to come from the Scripture, not from the church, traditions, institutions or the Pope. He believed that everybody should have access to the truth, and he believed that the breaking of bread was for everyone. At this time, people believed that only the priests could drink from the cup, but he wanted everyone to have access to the bread and the cup, and he also believed that God alone could forgive sin. Confession to the priests and all the indulgences were not biblical, and the foundation of the church, the rock on which the church was built, was not the Pope, but the Lord Jesus Christ. 

For these beliefs, which sounded so against the current culture of the day, Jan Hus was excommunicated in 1411. We know what this meant. He was put outside the church and was therefore eternally damned, but Jan Hus did not believe that. He knew that salvation wasn't through the church. He knew that he was saved, and he had no problem with the fact that he was excommunicated, but what it did mean was that anyone associated with him would also come under the same punishment. It also meant that he could no longer continue at Bethlehem chapel. He didn't have the pulpit anymore. He couldn't teach so freely. He had to go into hiding. But he had much support and those supporters became known as the Hussites. They used to go with him and preach in marketplaces, in barns, and go from village to village and speak the word of God, persuading people of the truth of the gospel. 

Well, in 1415, Hus was invited to appear before the Council of Constance. He was told that it would be a good opportunity for him to explain himself, to justify his new doctrines, although, of course, they were not new. This was the very same council that had just decreed to exhume John Wycliffe’s bones and throw his ashes into the river and erase his memory from the world. It was also the council that was deliberating for several years about the big problem they had. During the time of Jan Hus there was actually more than one Pope – there were three ruling, which was a big problem. They were three rivals, and so this council had been formed to sort this out while, at the same time, they were also looking for heretics that they could remove.

When Hus was invited to attend this council, he thought that it would be a good opportunity. He would be able to speak to people, the Cardinals, the bishops, the Popes, even kings. He could tell them. He could speak to them. His friends told him not to go, but he had been promised safe conduct by Sigismund, the king of Germany, who later became the Holy Roman Emperor. This safe conduct meant that he was assured safe arrival and safe departure, despite the outcome of any findings. 

Despite this promise of safe conduct from the king, Hus was unsure. He knew it would be dangerous to go, but he thought that it might be worth the risk. His friends told him not to go at all, and his letters around this time show that it was a very big decision. He knew for sure that there was a real possibility he may never return to Prague, but he thought it was right, and he decided to go. 

Well, his friends were right. The invitation was a trap, and so the minute Hus entered the city of Constance in Germany, he was arrested, and he was chained up to the wall of a dungeon. Now, the council knew that Jan Hus had huge influence in Bohemia and had a lot of support, and so they wanted him to recant, that means to go back on what he had said before, to say “Yes, all that I've said before, all my writings and teachings and preaching, all of that was false and wrong and from the devil, and actually, I believe in whatever the church wanted him to believe”. That was recanting. All he would need to do was sign. All he would need to do is just say a few words. They worked hard on him day after day, trying to force him to change his mind, to say that his all his teaching was rubbish. Week turned into week, turned into months, and Jan Hus would not

The council then thought that they would threaten him. They pronounced him a heretic and condemned him to be burned at the stake unless, of course, he recanted. Well, the sentence was declared, and Jan Hus was unmoved. The bishops went to him in the dungeon. They went again and again and tried to get Hus to recant, deprived him, pushed him, but he would not. Jan Hus said, “If you can show me something from the scripture that is against what I have taught and preached, then gladly I will recant. But if not, then I stand by the truth and the authority of the Scripture.” 

During these last few months in the dungeon in Constance, his jailer ended up supporting him by providing paper and ink, and so he was able to write some letters. In these letters we can see a man who was so centred on the truth of God's word, and who cared deeply for his flock back in Bohemia. He wrote to his congregation, “Remember beloved, that I have never had anything more at heart from the beginning than your salvation. It is in His name that I have taught you the Word of God, and I shall never cease from doing so, even from the bottom of my prison”. To a fellow priest he wrote, “My very dear brother, be zealous in preaching the scriptures and work like a favoured soldier of Christ. Live first of all, piously and purely, and afterwards, teach faithfully and sincerely. Be unto others an example in every good work.” And his final letter, which he probably would have known was his final letter, was to his friends, and again, it shows just how much he treasured the Word of God. “Master Martin, my disciple, forget not the faithful manner in which I taught you the Word of God. Master Nicholas, preserve faithfully God's word. May Gallus preach it and all of you my beloved, listen attentively to it and guard it in your hearts.” 

On July 1, Hus wrote his final declaration, stating that he refused to go back on any of his preaching, teachings and writings. Later that day, the king of Germany, Sigismund, the one who had deceitfully promised him safe conduct, sent his own men to the cell to again try to persuade him to recant. He had days to live, if he would only just sign this, if he would only just say these words, then he would live. In tears, Jan Hus said, “Unless it could be shown him from the scripture that his teachings were wrong, he would not recant.” So there was nothing more they could do. The sentence had been pronounced and the date was set, all his works would be burnt, and he too would be burnt at the stake and declared a heretic.

At 6am on the sixth of July, 1415, Jan Hus was bought out, made to stand outside the cathedral at Constance he was allowed no defence. He was symbolically defrocked from his robes to represent his degradation from a priest to a heretic. A paper crown with demons painted on it was placed on his head. Again, in his final moments, people, the bishops and many people urged him to recant and turn. He just needed to say one thing, but he would not. He was forced to watch all his books and writings burn at the gates of the church building, and then he was paraded through the city. When he came to the place of execution, he fell on his knees, and he looked up to heaven, and as the bishops were chanting repeatedly, “We commit thy soul to the devil,” Hus cried out, “Into Thy hands, O Lord, do I commit my spirit. Thou hast redeemed me, O good and faithful God. Lord Jesus, it is for You that I endure this cruel death with patience. Have mercy on my enemies, I pray.” The mob laughed at him. His head had been shaved in a way to mock him. The paper crown was a bit of skew on his head, and some say that people tried to put it on upside down so that they could mock him further. The chain was placed around his neck. Wood soaked in pitch was piled around his feet, and the flame was lit, and Hus cried out, “In the truth of the gospel I have written, taught and preached, and today I will gladly die,” and Hus sang the Psalms until the flames overwhelmed him. 

When the flames died down and the crowd had dispersed, the executioner split his skull, crushed his bones, and shovelled them into a wheelbarrow before dumping it all into the Rhine River. The council hoped to dampen Jan Hus’ influence and ultimately to erase him from history. 

Jan Hus was often demeaningly referred to as a silly goose by his enemies because of his surname, meaning goose. In a letter at the latter part of his life, he wrote, perhaps a little prophetically, “God has sent among you just a silly goose. But one day he will send among you an eagle.” 

The torch that Jan Hus held boldly was passed on as his followers, known as the Hussites, continued to spread his teaching and the Word of God to the common people of Bohemia and also into Germany, and despite the efforts of the authorities, his name was not forgotten. In fact, almost a century later, in Leipzig, Germany, a man was accused of being a follower of Jan Hus and therefore a heretic. And the response of this German man was, “Ja, ich bin ein Hussite.” “Yes, I am a Hussite.” This German man was none other than Martin Luther, who had just a few years earlier, nailed his 95 theses on the door of the Wittenberg church in Germany. 

And so the torch of the testimony of Jesus and of the gospel continued to be passed on. Both John Wycliffe and Jan Hus were personally moved by the truth of the gospel, and they lived lives that were centred on the Word of God, and both men gave their lives to ensure that the truth of the gospel was known and accessible to everyone. And neither man lived to see the immeasurable impact they would have on the whole world. So let us remember these faithful men who stood for the gospel and stood for God's word against the political power and the culture of their day, who risked everything so that the people of their generation could hear the truth and could hear the Word of God and know the true way of salvation. And let's also remember that the same torch of the gospel of the testimony of Jesus has passed to us as well, and what are we to do with it? 

We'll finish with the words of the Lord Jesus from Matthew chapter five. “You are the light of the world. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven”.