To Die is Gain!

I have laughed and joked before about people who can set down and read a book and cry.  I am sure I will do it again.  I think how can a book make you cry?  Well I guess that I do not have the imagination and comprehension that many book readers have.  However I have something to share with you today that moved me when I read it.  Recently I have begun to teach our youth on Wednesday from the experiences of Daniel.  I wanted to begin by telling them of martyrs of the faith.  I once read a sermon by John McArthur and he talked about Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley being burned at a stake.  So I found this article below.  I am telling the honest truth I sat and read this in a conference room during a very boring meeting and it was all I could do to hold in the tears.  When I read it to our youth again I had to pause because I could see it.

So today I share with you two heroes.  It’s not about my thoughts today.  Instead it is about two men who refused to waste their life with worldly things and gave it all for Christ!

Enjoy!


Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man. We shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.’ These courageous words from the mouth of Bishop Latimer have reverberated down the centuries, a clarion call of the Reformation and one of the most famous statements ever spoken at an execution anywhere in the world. They were uttered in a ditch outside the walls of Oxford in October 1555, 450 years ago. Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley, two of the heavyweights of the English Reformation, had helped to transform the Church of England from top to bottom according to biblical principles. But now Queen Mary Tudor was on the throne and their reforming work was undone.

With Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, they were taken to Oxford in March 1554, interrogated, condemned as heretics and excommunicated. In the late summer of 1555 events took a new turn. A papal delegation arrived in Oxford and condemned the prisoners over again at St Mary-the-Virgin Church. Cranmer’s life would be spared a few months longer because, as Archbishop of Canterbury, the Pope’s formal verdict was needed before his execution. But Latimer and Ridley could be more easily dealt with. On October 16, Latimer and Ridley were led to the place of execution in a ditch near Balliol College, just outside the city walls (now Oxford’s Broad Street). At the stake Ridley and Latimer joyfully embraced, having not met face to face since their arrival in Oxford 18 months before. Ridley encouraged his fellow martyr: “Be of good heart, brother, for God will either assuage the fury of the flame or else strengthen us to abide it.” Ridley kissed the stake and the two men prayed together, kneeling side by side.

A large number of spectators gathered to witness the execution. Armed soldiers were out in force because the authorities feared trouble from the crowd. Dr Richard Smith, a local Oxford clergyman, preached for 15 minutes from a makeshift pulpit on the predictable text: ‘If I yield my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing’ (1 Corinthians 13:3). The preacher exhorted Latimer and Ridley to return to the Roman Catholic Church and explained to the crowd that they were not martyrs but suicides. The bishops were told they could only speak if it was to recant, but Ridley replied: “So long as the breath is in my body, I will never deny my Lord Christ and his truth. God’s will be done in me.” In a loud voice he shouted out that he committed his cause to God.

Ridley’s brother-in-law, George Shipside, was allowed within the cordon of guards to give a bag of gunpowder to the two men to shorten their sufferings, which they accepted thankfully as a token of the mercy of God. As the fire was lit, Latimer died swiftly and comparatively painlessly. He held out his hands into the flames and was soon overcome by the smoke. Yet Ridley suffered excruciating agony. As the flames began to rise, he called out (first in Latin, then in English): “Into your hands, O Lord, I commit my spirit.” But the fire on his side of the stake burned slowly. The bundles of wood and reeds were packed so tightly that the flames burned only his feet and legs, and he cried out: “I cannot burn.”

Shipside ran forward and unwittingly made matters worse by piling on more bundles of wood high up around Ridley’s face and head, which only deadened the fire still further. The martyr’s legs were burned off, while above the waist he was untouched. Still conscious, he shouted out, “For God’s sake, let the fire come to me! I cannot burn! Lord, have mercy on me!” One of the soldiers eventually pulled away a bundle of wood, allowing the flames to rise. Ridley was able to swing himself forward, so that the fire reached the bag of gunpowder around his neck. Archbishop Cranmer was forced to watch the horrifying final moments of his brother bishops and his faith began to waver, though he ultimately also gave his life for the gospel on the same spot.

Yet the martyrdom of Latimer and Ridley had even greater and more far-reaching consequences. By the grace of God, their violent execution did more to promote the growth of biblical Christianity in England than all their sermons and theological treatises put together. Their gospel witness has lived on through four and a half centuries since. May the candle they lit in that Oxford ditch never be put out!

–Church of England Newspaper

 

Today 450 people will be murdered because they will not deny their faith in Jesus Christ!

Jesus Saves

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