Why wouldn’t a preacher want to visit there? We just returned from spending the Easter weekend in Birmingham, England—preaching at a conference for a group of highly motivated young adults, AdvANCE (Adventist Apologetics Networking Conference on Evangelism). And I was blessed. Not only because of their passion to communicate the everlasting gospel to their extremely secular homeland (one European survey ranked the United Kingdom as the most “godless” nation in Europe). But also because just a few miles up the motorway is the English town of Lutterworth, the final parish of the great 14th century English preacher scholar, John Wycliffe. In that stone and brick sanctuary stands the pulpit containing wooden pieces from the very one Wycliffe thundered from during his pastorate (1374 to 1384). Behind glass are the fragments of the robe this great preacher once wore. And on the platform beside the altar is the still crimson-padded chair he once used.
On the south wall of the high-ceilinged sanctuary is a marble mural carving of Wycliffe, dressed in humble garb, standing in front of the cross, one hand pointing to an open Bible, the other raised to his gathered countrymen. Inscribed are these words: “His labours in the cause of scriptural truth were crowned by one immortal achievement, his translation of the Bible [from the Latin Vulgate] into the English tongue. This mighty work drew on him indeed the bitter hatred of all who were making merchandize of the popular credulity and ignorance: but he found an abundant reward in the blessing of his countrymen, of every rank and age to whom he unfolded the words of eternal life.” Incensed by the mendicant friars who plied their beggarly superstitions across England, Wycliffe, at one time a chaplain to the king, became a champion of the commoners’ right to read the forbidden Holy Scriptures for themselves, in their own tongue. Three times Roman and royal courts attempted to silence the Reformer’s voice. But all three attempts failed. Before his second and mortal stroke would fell him, Wycliffe completed his translation of the Bible. But with no printing press (yet to be invented), its leaves had to be hand-copied by volunteer scribes and secretly passed throughout the country by itinerant preachers (Lollards).
Why bother with this story of an Englishman? “The character of Wycliffe is a testimony to the educating, transforming power of the Holy Scriptures. It was the Bible that made him what he was. The effort to grasp the great truths of revelation imparts freshness and vigor to all the faculties. It expands the mind, sharpens the perceptions, and ripens the judgment. The study of the Bible will ennoble every thought, feeling, and aspiration as no other study can . . . . [and] would give to the world men [and women] of stronger and more active intellect, as well as of nobler principle, than has ever resulted from the ablest training that human philosophy affords” (Great Controversy 94).
Called “the Morning Star of the Reformation” (John Hus and Martin Luther would later draw their inspiration from his ground-breaking reforms), Wycliffe died in his parish at sixty. Enraged they had been unable to publicly silence him, forty years later Rome ordered his bones exhumed, burned to ash and then cast into the nearby Swift River—unwittingly symbolizing the eventual reach Wycliffe’s teaching would have, flowing to every shore on earth. We are his spiritual descendents. Then may the God of Wycliffe raise up a new generation of young, fearless, Bible-saturated defenders of Christ’s faith! That is my prayer.
They found the door to heaven this week! A gentleman named User served as the chief minister to the powerful and long-ruling Queen Hatshepsut of Egypt (15th century BC). In fact for twenty years he was “vizier” (an Egyptian civil officer having viceregal powers) in her palace. Along the way he also acquired the titles of prince and mayor of the city. So while he wasn’t royalty, he hobnobbed with them. In life, and even in death. For archaeologists have found his tomb on the west bank of the Nile at Luxor, the burial ground reserved for kings and queens. User had connections.
Have you read the 2300 pages of the newly passed health care bill? I haven't either. But as one report summarized the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that the president signed this week, it is "the most sweeping expansion of government social policy in more than 40 years, and perhaps the most polarizing." Regardless of your personal convictions about the new health care law, most all of us are agreed that its protracted debate certainly did not bring out the best in civil discourse, did it? And I wonder if all of this is a harbinger of days to come, the grinding gridlock of political process and national governance that in a time of economic (or any other) crisis could unexpectedly veer this nation down a pathway long predicted but hardly anticipated. But never mind that notion right now.
At what point does a thinking person become concerned with nuclear proliferation in the Middle East? This Tuesday both Israel and Syria announced their intentions to produce atomic power plants, ostensibly for peaceful energy-generating purposes in their nations. And of course the world has been warily keeping an eye on Iran as it proceeds with its own nuclear power program. And now word on the street is that Egypt, Jordan and United Arab Emirates are also eager to develop their own nuclear power. And who’s to blame any of them? After all, nuclear fission is environmentally cleaner than coal-burning, avoiding the belching of fossil fuels into our atmosphere, thus theoretically reducing global warming and its effects. The small matter of nuclear waste storage, of course, is a perplexing down-side to atomic power. But viva nuclear fission—and a brave new world precariously balanced on the edge between peaceful energy and nuclear weaponry.
In the space of one and a half months, our hemisphere has suffered two immense killer quakes—the 7.0 magnitude quake that leveled Port-au-Prince, Haiti, January 12, and left 230,000 dead and an entire country in economic ruin; and the magnitude 8.8 monster that ravaged Chile last Sabbath morning, unleashing destructive tsunamis in its wake (one eyewitness reported a wall of water “fifty feet” high). While the Chilean death toll was a small fraction of that in Haiti (because of enforced earthquake construction codes), the energy released by the Chilean quake was so immense scientists are now telling us it knocked our planet 3 inches off its axis, thus shortening our day by 1.26 microseconds. Our hearts and our prayers (and our financial gifts—go to 
Why are the “talking heads” so glum? Thomas Friedman, in his Sunday column in the New York Times, reported that because of the economic downturn the residents of Tracy, California, are now going to be charged to use their emergency 911 service. You can pay $48 a year to cover unlimited 911 calling, or you can wait and be billed $300 for every time you have an emergency. “Welcome to the lean years,” Friedman opined. For the past seventy years Americans have lived off the fat of the land. Our parents may have been the Greatest Generation, but we have become the Grasshopper Generation, Friedman observed, “eating through the prosperity that was bequeathed us like hungry locusts.” But after the feast comes the famine. “Let’s just hope our lean years will only number seven,” referring to the Genesis story of the crippling Egyptian famine. 
“An estimated 1 million kids orphaned by quake.” That stunning headline is enough to break your heart, isn’t it? Barely two weeks into the Haitian catastrophe, and the unfolding saga keeps peeling back layer after layer of the immense heartache and suffering that our Caribbean neighbors are enduring.
Haiti’s devastating earthquake on Tuesday afternoon is our crisis, too. As I sit here and write the next morning, initial reports from Port-au-Prince indicate that much of the capital city of nearly 1.5 million residents lies buried beneath collapsed rubble, as the result of the 7.0 magnitude record-breaking temblor. The Parliament building, the presidential palace, the United Nations mission headquarters, hospitals, schools, churches and untold numbers of apartments, houses and tenement buildings have been flattened. How many lives have been lost in this epic disaster no one, of course, yet knows. Some already fear untold thousands of casualties.