Tyndale Society Journal No. 40

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up someone from the group to help me pull the huge handle, then lifting off a page of the bold, black print of Psalm 150 from the Gutenberg Bible. “Awesome” immediately sprung from the mouth of this small boy on the front row! Another young lady of high school age asked to be given a reject page wadded up and sticking out of Gutenberg’s waste paper basket. She told me she wanted to do a paper on Gutenberg. I talked with her and her mother, and gave her two perfect printed pages. One was printed with only the black type and a blank space left open for the hand illumination that was individually done on every Gutenberg Bible. The other page we had preprinted with the large color initial “B” and other capitals in red and blue ink, which we then printed over during the demonstration with the black type. Her mother reported back to me months later that she had written a paper on Gutenberg for a speech contest, had won at every level and had gone on to the State contest! That was the year before Gutenberg was selected by Time Magazine as Man of the Millennium. Very early in our Branson exhibit, an elderly evangelist from Springfield called to arrange a visit. He arrived just as we were opening, which allowed me to take him through on a solo tour. As we stood in front of two manuscript Bibles, I commented that a scribe would spend as much as five years of his life copying just one Bible. He quietly prayed, “Thank God for the scribes.” As we moved on I told him about Wycliffe and his followers, and their phenomenal courage in defying the Roman Church because they believed the Church was teaching doctrines contrary to the Scriptures, and the only way he believed to correct this would be for the people to have the Bible in their own English language. Again he prayed, “Thank God for Wycliffe.” It was the same as we moved to the press demonstration, “Thank God for Gutenberg.” When we entered the English Room and I told him about Tyndale. Tears welled up in his eyes as again he prayed, “Thank God for Tyndale.” Together we viewed The Fire of Devotion film. After it finished, I asked this devoted servant of God for prayer for our Branson exhibit. We learned much in Branson beyond the issues involved in managing an exhibit open to the public. We left with the conviction that we had exposed many thousands of persons to our Bible history. Visitors’ expressions of appreciation showed that many had been deeply affected by what they had seen and learned. But above all else, we discovered that in just telling about the lives of Wycliffe and Tyndale, we were proclaiming the Gospel! Many volunteers helped us in Branson. Some worked in our Gift Shop. Two persons who had helped in our Dallas exhibit drove 500 miles each way to volunteer two weeks of vacation time to give me some respite. They demonstrated the printing press, answered questions, and recounted incidents of

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