Impact

AT THE TIME

Being the first Protestant to be burned at the stake under Queen Mary, all eyes were on John Rogers to see how his faith bore up under the most extreme of trials. The fact that he rested so assuredly on his faith and trusted in his Lord to see him through the trials was a huge encouragement and inspiration to others imprisoned and awaiting the same trial. 

The historian Joseph L Chester, who wrote the definitive biography on Rogers back in 1861, stated there "He had set them an example worthy of imitation and whither he had led the way, they could now more confidently follow."

Bradford, so soon to follow Rogers to the stake at Smithfield, wrote to Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley stating "dear brother (Rogers) ... had broken the ice valiantly". In his reply Ridley wrote, "I thank the Lord God and Heavenly Father by Christ that, since I heard our dear brother Rogers' departing, and stout confession of Christ and His truth even unto death, my heart - blessed be God! - so rejoiced of it, that, since that time, I never felt any lumpish heaviness in my heart as I grant I have felt sometimes before."

287 Protestant Martyrs were to follow Rogers under Queen Mary - the historian J C Ryle informs us - including one archbishop, four bishops, twenty other clergymen, fifty five women and - even more appallingly - four children.

How God must have wept.

OVER THE LAST 450 YEARS

If Rogers' heroic death encouraged and inspired his own generation, his life and work surely had impact not only in that generation, but in all of the generations in the 450+ years since. Specifically, his achievement in having published and have officially authorised the first English translation of the Bible - under the pseudonym Thomas Matthew - was to unleash the word of God amongst the ordinary English speaking peoples in a way that lasts to this day.

The core translations from that Bible from Tyndale and Coverdale were in turn incorporated into the Great Bible two years later and in due course perhaps 80% of it into the famous King James Bible of 1611. This translation in turn has endured through the centuries, spread via the British Empire and after that the American cultural global dominance to all corners of this earth. Countless lives have been impacted by the Word of God, read in accessible English, enabling each reader in turn to experience the full wonder and glory of the Gospel at first hand and thereby enabling the 'God breathed' Word to speak personally to each soul.

Even to this day, this impact lives on, with a survey as recently as 2014 showing that in the USA fully 55% of Americans who read the Bible still use the King James Version, itself so heavily dependent on those original translations from Tyndale and Coverdale first published together in the Thomas Matthew Bible of 1537, produced and edited by John Rogers.