Individual Christians
William Tyndale, d.1536
Translated the Bible into English, and was burned alive on October 6, 1536. His final words reportedly were, "Oh Lord, open the King of England's eyes". Tyndale is quoted as saying "I defy the Pope, and all his laws; and if God spares my life, I will cause the boy that drives the plow in England to know more of the Scriptures than the Pope himself!" [1]
Tyndale introduced the following phrases into English during his translation: "let there be light", "the powers that be", "my brother's keeper", "the salt of the earth", "a law unto themselves", "filthy lucre", "it came to pass", "gave up the ghost", "Jehovah", "Passover", "atonement", and "scapegoat".
Jacob Hutter, d. 1536
Jacob Hutter was an Anabaptist religious leader who practiced community of goods, nonviolence, and baptism of adult believers. He was tortured and burned alive on February 25, 1536. Those who followed his doctrines became known as Hutterites.
Menno Simons, d. 1561
Menno Simons was an Anabaptist religious leader from Friesland. Quoted as saying "Christ is our fortress; patience our weapon of defense; the Word of God our sword. ... Iron and metal spears and swords we leave to those who, alas, regard human blood and swine’s blood of well-nigh equal value." Those who followed his doctrines became known as Mennonites.
John Bunyan, d. 1688
John Bunyan was a Christian writer and preacher. He wrote The Pilgrim's Progress, arguably the most famous published Christian allegory.
George Fox, d. 1691
George Fox was an English Dissenter and a major early figure — usually considered the founder of the Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as the Quakers. Toward the end of his life, he wrote a letter for general circulation pointing out that Abel, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Moses and David were all keepers of sheep or cattle, and that a learned education should not therefore be seen as a qualification for ministry. [2]
Isaac Watts, d.1748
Isaac Watts is recognised as the "Father of English Hymnody", as he was the first prolific and popular English hymnwriter, credited with some 750 hymns.
George Whitfield, d. 1770
George Whitfield was a minister in the Church of England and one of the leaders of the Methodist movement. He travelled through America, England, Scotland, Ireland, Bermuda, Gibraltar, and The Netherlands. Benjamin Franklin calculated, by pacing the area around George Whitfield where his voice was audible while preaching, that he could indeed speak to tens of thousands of people in a single sermon.
Francis Asbury, d. 1816
Francis Asbury became a local preacher at 18 and was ordained at 22. In 1771 he volunteered to travel to America. When the American War of Independence broke out in 1776 he was the only Methodist minister to remain in America. [3]
William Carey, d. 1834
William Carey was an English Protestant missionary and Baptist minister. Carey was one of the founders of the Baptist Missionary Society. As a missionary in Serampore, India, he translated the Bible into Bengali, Sanskrit, and numerous other languages and dialects.
Adoniram Judson, d. 1850
Adniram Judson was an American Baptist missionary who translated the Bible into the Burmese language, and suffered severe persecution and imprisonment. His work inspired and equipped Ko Tha Byu, a Karen native, to become the first apostle to the Burmese. [4]
George Müller, d. 1898
George Muller was a Christian evangelist and coordinator of orphanages in Bristol, England, cared for a total of over 100,000 orphans in his life. He was well-known for his constant faith in God and for providing an education to the children under his care, to the point where he was accused of raising the poor above their natural station in life. In 1875, at the age of 70, he began a 17 year period of missionary travel. In that time, he preached in the United States, India, Australia, Japan, China, and nearly forty other countries. [5]
Dwight Lyman Moody, d. 1899
Also known as D.L. Moody, was an American evangelist, setting up Sunday Schools, and preaching accross America, and visiting China and England. [6]
James Hudson Taylor, d. 1905
Hudson Taylor was a British Protestant Christian missionary to China, and founder of the China Inland Mission (CIM) (now OMF International). [7]
Footnotes
- ↑ Foxe's Book of Martyrs, Chap XII
- ↑ Marsh 1847, 364
- ↑ America's Bishop: The Life of Francis Asbury (2003) by Darius Salter (ISBN 1-928915-39-6)
- ↑ Burmese Bible & Adoniram Judson Biography
- ↑ (Works by George Muller at Project Guttenberg [1])
- ↑ (Sermons of D.L. Moody [2])
- ↑ James Hudson Taylor, OMF Website