The Bible That Took a Hundred Hands

In 1525, William Tyndale hunched over a desk in Cologne, Germany, translating the New Testament into English for the first time from the original Greek. He worked in exile, hunted by agents of Henry VIII, moving between safe houses across Europe. Tyndale planted a seed he would never see fully bloom. In 1536, he was strangled and burned at the stake near Brussels, his final words reportedly, "Lord, open the King of England's eyes."

But the seed did not die with the planter. Miles Coverdale took Tyndale's work and completed the first full English Bible. John Rogers revised it further. Thomas Cranmer placed copies in every parish church in England. Decades later, forty-seven scholars gathered at Westminster to produce the King James Version — and roughly eighty percent of its New Testament wording came straight from Tyndale's pen.

Tyndale planted. Coverdale watered. Cranmer cultivated. The King James translators harvested. Yet none of them gave the growth. Only the Almighty could take ink on a page and ignite a spiritual revolution across the English-speaking world.

Paul told the Corinthians to stop quarreling over which leader deserved their loyalty. "I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth." The church has always advanced not through any single hero, but through faithful servants doing their part — trusting that the Lord of the harvest will bring the increase.